Re: Converting html to text

Because CSS in webmail could be bad. very bad. At least that's what I've
been told. So we're stuck with evil nested tables, and yes, zero width
images.

On Sat, 2011-04-23 at 19:24 -0500, Martin Maney wrote:
> 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
> 

-- 
Linux Users Of Northern Illinois (Chicago) - Technical Discussion 
http://luni.org/mailman/listinfo/luni