Converting html to text

This reminds me of something I was looking for the other day.  I prefer
to read email in text mode, but occasionally I have to dig the couple
lines of information out of a thousand lines of tortured HTML (why is
it that these things are always the worst sort of old-school HTML
hacks, full of zero-width images and other trash?).  At some time in
the past there was a little CLI filter named hmtl2txt (or something
like that) that I would use... at some upgrade it went missing, not
sure when.  The other day I wanted it enough to poke around, and I
ended up with this one-line shell script:

  w3m -dump -T text/html

Okay, two lines with standard #! header when saved to ~/bin so I don't
have to type all that.  I suppose I could attach it to mutt more
intimately, but it's occasionally useful outside the email reader.

(I think the previous html2txt went missing because it was built around
a similar use of lynx, which is no longer commonly installed.  The
above is not as general as the older tool - it only works as a filter
and doesn't allow any of the gazillion options w3m does.  Perfect!)

-- 
River lines, defensible passes, the posession of hills and
encirclement of cities; these are the syntax that structures
the speech of guns.  -- John M. Ford

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