Use all HTML 2.0 tags (except forms)

headings This is level 2

heading level 3

heading level 4

heading level 5

heading level 6

List constructs

ul

Unordered lists

ol

Ordered lists

dl

definition lists (like this)

menu

menu lists

dir

directory lists

All of the list constructs can nest, with each successive nesting level indented relative to the previous one. The HTML blockquote element, although not technically a list construct, nests with the other lists.

Lists have two rendering styles, regular

• This is a regular list element
• So is this

Which leaves a little space between the elements, and compact

• This is a compact list element
• So is this

Compact lists are normally a bit more scrunched together, but when converting to ASCII text there is no difference.

Examples of list elements

This is a summary of the list types:

• This is an unordered list
• Each list element in an unordered list is preceded by a list symbol, or marker that changes depending upon the nesting level of the list. As you can see, when a single list element needs to wrap onto the next display line, it stays indented
  • This is a nested unordered list
  • The marker symbol changed
  • This list is compact
  • Notice less spacing between the list elements
• Back to the outer list
• Its not compact

Here is an example of an ordered list

1. This is item 1
2. This is item 2
3. You can see the list items are numbered
   1. When ordered lists are nested
   2. Each nesting level gets its own numbers
4. This is the end of the ordered list

The other two list styles are directory lists and menu lists. For now, directory lists are rendered excactly like unordered lists, because no-one uses them. Menu lists are also like un-ordered lists, but they're not supposed to nest, and they get a different list marker, like this:

Mixed lists

Definition lists, ordered lists, and un-ordered lists can be freely intermingled (block quotes too). Menu lists and directory lists can be combined with the others, but officially only at the highest nesting level.

• This is an un-ordered list
• Individual list items can have phrase markup, such as bold or italic
  1. This is a compact ordered list
  2. The list items are numbered. Inside this ordered list we could have a block quote which is a nested paragraph. Notice that blockquotes indent the right margin.
  3. From Moby Dick:

     Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely --having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation.

  4. Back to the list
     1. Lists can be nested arbitrarily deep
     2. Nesting levels more than about 5 or 6 probably won't do what you expect, however.
     3. Within nested list elements, you can include preformatted objects, such as tables that observe the current list indent setting, such as

        
        item      quantity          price
        ----      --------          -----
          A            27           $4.36
          B            19           $2.84
          C            11          $22.34
        

        Tabs within preformatted objects each take up half of an indent level. You can also use line breaks inside lists.
        - like this -
        or even start new paragraphs.

        This is a new paragraph started inside a list element. In general, except where explicitly prohibited (or indicated otherwise), you may nest any tag within any other tag.

  5. We can also nest definition lists, like this:

     This is the defining term

     And this is its definition

     term 1

     term2

     More than one term can have the same definition

  6. Currently, markup can't be used inside a definition term of a definition list (although one can use markup out-side of it).
• This is back to the outer-most list.

Phrase markup

HTML has many tags that affect the font style, one can use either functional tags such as strong or cite, which is the prefered method, or markup tags, such as bold or italic.

The basic font style is a plain medium-roman font.

• The Quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

HTML defines many tags that alter the font style. The three primary style alterations are:

• bold:
  The Quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
• italic:
  The Quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
• mono-spaced font:
  The Quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

There are two additional styles that are deprecated, but still used in some contexts. They are

• underline:
  The Quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
• strike-out:
  The Quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

Font styles may be arbitrarily nested, to obtain combinations like bold italic or Underlined bold mono-spaced. all of the combinations are enumerated somewhere else.

The functional tags, which map to one of more of the combinations above are:

And here is a simple address (using the address tag)

HTML entities

In HTML, the characters &, <, >, and " are special, and need to be represented as: &amp;, &lt;, &gt;, and &quot;.

In addition, the entire latin-1 character set can be represented similarly, such as &reg; (®) or &ouml; (ö).

Images

Inline images are ignored when converting to text unless the alt attribute is used, in which case the alternate text given is output.

Ending

This file is distributed as part of HTML2text by Joe Moss (joe@morton.rain.com).