Looking for a tool to make plain text document out of a simple HTML document

[Akseli Mäki]

Hi,

Hopefully this is not too much offtopic.

I'm working on a FAQ. I want to make two versions of it, plain text and
HTML. I'm looking for a tool that will make a plain text doc out of the
HTML doc. The HTML version doesn't have anything fancy, just internal
links. So the tool must be able to delete internal links and anchors from
the HTML version, but leave external links in simplified form. That is, the
HTML version would say <a href="http://foo/bar.html">Bar</a> and the plain
text version would just say http://foo/bar.html. The tool should also be
able to make mailto links into plain text, that is, change <a
href="mailto:fo *@bar.com">Foo </a> into fo*@bar.com. In fact, I think both
of these changes might be possible with regex search and replace engine. I
have one at my editor, but I don't know how to use it. So I'm either
looking for a regex strings or a ready tool, both will be find.

[Akseli Mäki]

Akseli Mäki wrote:

I forgot to say, that the tool should be Dos or Windows one.

[Jon]

open the file in Word, select all, copy, open Notepad, paste, save :)

Jon

"Akseli Mäki" <ne********@aks eli-yok.utu.fi> wrote in message
news:0p******** *************** *********@4ax.c om...
Akseli Mäki wrote:

I forgot to say, that the tool should be Dos or Windows one.

[Owen Jacobson]

On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 14:12:45 +0200, Akseli Mäki wrote:

Hi,

Hopefully this is not too much offtopic.

I'm working on a FAQ. I want to make two versions of it, plain text and
HTML. I'm looking for a tool that will make a plain text doc out of the
HTML doc. The HTML version doesn't have anything fancy, just internal
links. So the tool must be able to delete internal links and anchors from
the HTML version, but leave external links in simplified form. That is, the
HTML version would say <a href="http://foo/bar.html">Bar</a> and the plain
text version would just say http://foo/bar.html. The tool should also be
able to make mailto links into plain text, that is, change <a
href="mailto:fo *@bar.com">Foo </a> into fo*@bar.com. In fact, I think both
of these changes might be possible with regex search and replace engine. I
have one at my editor, but I don't know how to use it. So I'm either
looking for a regex strings or a ready tool, both will be find.

While it doesn't *exactly* match your requirements, lynx is a very good
tool for doing this. "lynx --dump http://host/dir/page.ext" will produce
a plain-text output with links replaced with '[1]link text'; at the bottom
of the output is a list of all the links' destination URLs.

It is available for Windows at <http://jim.spath.com/lynx_win32/>.

--
Some say the Wired doesn't have political borders like the real world,
but there are far too many nonsense-spouting anarchists or idiots who
think that pranks are a revolution.

[David Dorward]

Jon wrote:

Please direct your attention to: http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?How_to_post

open the file in Word, select all, copy, open Notepad, paste, save :)

How does that preserve extenal hyperlinks?

--
David Dorward <http://dorward.me.uk/>

[Brian]

Akseli Mäki wrote:

Hopefully this is not too much offtopic.
Perhaps slightly, but the ciwa-tools groups seems to generate little
traffic outside of spam.
I'm working on a FAQ. I want to make two versions of it, plain text
and HTML.
May we ask why?
I'm looking for a tool that will make a plain text doc out of the
HTML doc. The HTML version doesn't have anything fancy, just
internal links. So the tool must be able to delete internal links
and anchors from the HTML version, but leave external links in
simplified form. That is, the HTML version would say <a
href="http://foo/bar.html">Bar</a> and the plain text version would
just say http://foo/bar.html. The tool should also be able to make
mailto links into plain text, that is, change <a
href="mailto:fo *@bar.com">Foo </a> into fo*@bar.com.
And in both cases, you want to *remove* the anchor text, is that right?
In fact, I think both of these changes might be possible with regex
search and replace engine.
That's how I'd probably do it, but it would be a little time consuming
for me, because I'd need several steps to do it. My editor has a
search/replace dialogue box. If I were going to try to do what you're
doing, I'd copy the html files to a new directory, each file with a
new .txt extension. Then I'd run the search/replace.

Search: <a href="{[a-z/]*}">[a-zA-Z]*</a>

Replace: \1

This almost works in my text editor, NoteTab Light. Perhaps it'll
help you get started.
I have one at my editor, but I don't know how to use it.

Google "regex" or "regular expression" -- lots of links to go
through. If you are going to go this route, then I doubt there's any
acceptable substiture to learning regular expressions. But then, if
your editor has them,

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

[Stan Brown]

In article <fg************ *************** *****@4ax.com> in
comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html, Akseli Mäki wrote:

Hi,

Hopefully this is not too much offtopic.

I'm working on a FAQ. I want to make two versions of it, plain text and
HTML. I'm looking for a tool that will make a plain text doc out of the
HTML doc. The HTML version doesn't have anything fancy, just internal
links. So the tool must be able to delete internal links and anchors from
the HTML version, but leave external links in simplified form.

Lynx can almost do what you want, and it has the great virtue that
you can do the job with a batch file rather than navigate menus. The
form (from memory; check with "lynx -help") is
lynx -dump URL_or_file >outputfile
A local file can be done either as file:///c:/zonk/file or without
the leading "file:///".

Lynx will insert bracketed numbers [1], [2], etc in the text after
each link, then put a list at the end, so you have a record of what
each link is. I don't think it makes any distinction among external
and internal links and mailtos, however. You could postprocess the
output to remove internal links from the link list.

http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/lynxport.htm

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
2.1 changes: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/changes.html
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Jon]

Whoops! missed that!!!!

Although this could be sorted with some word VBA script.. not really the
polace for that

Jon
"David Dorward" <do*****@yahoo. com> wrote in message
news:bs******** ***********@new s.demon.co.uk.. .
Jon wrote:

Please direct your attention to: http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?How_to_post

open the file in Word, select all, copy, open Notepad, paste, save :)

How does that preserve extenal hyperlinks?

--
David Dorward <http://dorward.me.uk/>

[Akseli Mäki]

Akseli Mäki wrote:

Ok thanks for all the suggestins. I already have Lynx so I'll use it.

[Akseli Mäki]

Brian wrote:

I'm working on a FAQ. I want to make two versions of it, plain text
and HTML.May we ask why?

Well, some people might prefer HMTL file, I don't know yet. I might deside
to drop the idea if no one downloads it. Naturally I would post only the
plaintext version to the NG.
And in both cases, you want to *remove* the anchor text, is that right?

Yes.