Html to doc text converter for palm pilots
html2pdbtxt [ -bchars ] [ -ttitle ] [ -uURL ] file.html [ file.txt ]
html2pdbtxt -v
html2pdbtxt converts HTML to text suitable for conversion to a Doc(4) file via txt2pdbdoc(1). If no text filename is given, the generated text is sent to standard output.
The following HTML tags (and corresponding ending tags) are recognized: ADDRESS, A~NAME, BLOCKQUOTE, BR, CENTER, DIV, DL, DT, H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, OL, OPTION, PRE, P, SELECT, SCRIPT, STYLE, TABLE, TITLE, UL. In all cases, the most ``reasonable'' thing is done given the constraints of the Doc(4) format which is essentially plain text. ALT attributes (typically found in \g(CWIMG tags) have their text extracted and placed between brackets [like this]. All other HTML tags are stripped.
Both HTML character and numeric (decimal and hexadecimal) entity references are converted to their byte value according to the ISO 8859-1 (Latin 1) character set so they appear properly on the Pilot. For example, ``résumé'' becomes ``resume'' with accented letter 'e's.
Unless specified with the -t option, the HTML file is scanned for <TITLE> ... </TITLE> tags and, if found, the title is extracted and put on line 1 of the generated file.
Bookmarks are placed into the generated file wherever <A~NAME="..."> tags are found in the HTML file.
-bchars
Specify the character sequence that is to serve as the bookmark indicator. The default is (*). (See the CAVEATS.)
-ttitle
Specify the title of the document that is to appear on line 1 of the generated file overriding any title found inside the HTML file between <TITLE> ... </TITLE> tags.
-uurl
Specify the URL the HTML file supposedly came from and put it on the line after the title, if any, in the generated file.
-v
Print the version number to standard output and exit.
To convert an HTML file to Doc:
html2pdbtxt -u http://www.wonderland.org/ alice.html alice.txt txt2pdbdoc "`head -1 alice.txt`" alice.txt alice.pdb
1.
Some Doc readers have a ``feature'' whereby, during the scan for bookmarks phase, they recognize the bookmark sequence of characters anywhere in the text and not just at the beginning of a line.
2.
Some Doc readers do not allow the bookmark sequence to contain the > character since they interpret that as the sequence delimiter, e.g., <->> will be interpreted as the sequence being merely -.
3.
Ordered lists (via the OL tag) are treated as unordered lists (like the UL tag) because it would greatly complicate the code since it would have to be parsed rather than simple substitutions being performed.
pdbtxt2html(1), txt2pdbdoc(1), doc(4), pdb(4)
International Standards Organization. ``ISO 8859-1: Information Processing -- 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets -- Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1.'' 1987.
World Wide Web Consortium. ``Character entity references in HTML 4.0.'' HTML 4.0 Specification, http://www.w3.org/
Paul J. Lucas <[email protected]>