
                                   HTML2TEXT
                                   ---------

INTRODUCTION

   HTML2text is a set of Tcl procedures for converting HTML to ASCII text.
   It differs from other converters I've seen in that it gives the user
   control of the rendering of the various tags.

   It uses the HTML parser from Sun's "Hippo HTML display library" (by
   Stephen Uhler). A copy of this library is included in the HTML2text
   distribution.

MANIFEST
     HTML2text           Executable Tcl script which uses the library to
                         convert from HTML to ASCII text
     README              Text version of the README file
     README.html         HTML version of the README file
     html_library-0.3    Directory containing version 0.3 of the Hippo
                         library
     html_text.tcl       Tcl routines to render ASCII text
     htmlsample.html     A sample HTML file

USAGE

From the shell command line

   NOTE: Before using the program (on Unix), you'll need to change the
   first line of the "HTML2text" file to point to the location of a Tcl 7.4
   (or newer) shell.

   To convert from HTML to text you can simply run the HTML2text utility.
   It works as a filter or you can optionally specify an input file and
   output file as arguments.

   All of the following could be used to generate the text version of the
   README:

        HTML2text < README.html > README
        HTML2text README.html > README
        HTML2text README.html README

From within a Tcl program

   In order to do the conversion in a Tcl program, you need to read in the
   "html_library.tcl" file from the "Hippo" library and the "html_text.tcl"
   file. You can either do this by "source"ing them directly or by
   arranging for them to be autoloaded.

   You can then convert HTML to ASCII by calling the "HTconvert_html"
   command. For example:

        puts [HTconvert_html "_This text is emphasized_"]

   would output the text in emphasized form. Using the defaults it would
   be:

        _This text is emphasized_

CUSTOMIZATION

   See the contents of the "HTML2text" file for a couple of examples of
   changing the renderings.

INSTALLATION

   If you wish to install the HTML2text program into a standard location
   for executables, you'll need to first install the
   "html_library-0.3/html_library.tcl" and "html_text.tcl" files into a
   library directory. Then modify the "HTML2text" program to load in the
   two library files (as well as changing the first line to point to tclsh,
   if you haven't already done so). The "HTML2text" file can then be copied
   into place.

