HTMLstrip reads inputfile or from "stdin" and strips the contained HTML
markup. Use this program to shrink and compactify your HTML files in a safe
way.
Recognized Content Types
There are three disjunct types of content which are recognized by
HTMLstrip while parsing:
HTML Tag (tag)
This is just a single HTML tag, i.e. a string beginning with a opening angle
bracket directly followed by an identifier, optionally followed by attributes
and ending with a closing angle bracket.
Preformatted (pre)
This is any contents enclosed in one of the following container tags:
1. <nostrip>
2. <pre>
3. <xmp>
The non-HTML-3.2-conforming "<nostrip>" tag is special here: It acts
like "<pre>" as a protection container for HTMLstrip but is also
stripped from the output. Use this as a pseudo-block which just preserves its
body for the HTMLstrip processing but itself is removed from the output.
Plain Text (txt)
This is anything not falling into one of the two other categories, i.e any
content both outside of preformatted areas and outside of HTML tags.
Supported Stripping Levels
The amount of stripping can be controlled by a optimization level, specified
via option -O (see below). Higher levels also include all of the lower
levels. The following stripping is done on each level:
Level 0:
No real stripping, just removing the sharp/comment-lines ("#...") [txt,tag].
Such lines are a standard feature of WML, so this is always done.
Level 1:
Minimal stripping: Same as level 0 plus stripping of blank and empty lines
[txt].
Level 2:
Good stripping: Same as level 1 plus compression of multiple whitespaces (more
then one in sequence) to single whitespaces [txt,tag] and stripping of
trailing whitespaces at the of of a line [txt,tag,pre].
This level is the default because while providing good optimization the
HTML markup is not destroyed and remains human readable.
Level 3:
Best stripping: Same as level 2 plus stripping of leading whitespaces on a
line [txt]. This can also be recommended when you still want to make sure that
the HTML markup is not destroyed in any case. But the resulting code is a
little bit ugly because of the removed whitespaces.
Level 4:
Expert stripping: Same as level 3 plus stripping of HTML comment lines
(``"<!-- ... -->"'') and crunching of HTML tag endsi [tag]. BECAREFULHERE: Comment lines are widely used for hiding some Java or
JavaScript code for browsers which are not capable of ignoring those stuff.
When using this optimization level make sure all your JavaScript code is hided
correctly by adding HTMLstrip's "<nostrip>" tags around the comment
delimiters.
Level 5:
Crazy stripping: Same as level 4 plus wrapping lines around to fit in an 80
column view window. This saves some newlines but both leads to really
unreadable markup code and opens the window for a lot of problems when this
code is used to layout the page in a browser. Use with care. This is only
experimental!
Additionally the following global strippings are done:
"^\n":
A leading newline is always stripped.
"<suck>":
The "<suck>" tag just absorbs itself and all whitespaces around it.
This is like the backslash for line-continuation, but is done in Pass 8, i.e.
really at the end. Use this inside HTML tag definitions to absorb whitespaces,
for instance around %body when used inside "<table>" structures
which at some point are newline-sensitive in Netscape Navigator.
OPTIONS
-ooutputfile
This redirects the output to outputfile. Usually the output will be send to
"stdout" if no such option is specified or outputfile is ""-"".
-Olevel
This sets the optimization/stripping level, i.e. how much HTMLstrip should
compress the contents.
-bblocksize
For efficiency reasons, input is divided into blocks of 16384 chars. If
you have some performance problems, you may try to change this value.
Any value between 1024 and 32766 is allowed. With a value of
0, input is not divided into blocks.
-v
This sets verbose mode where some
processing information will be given on the console.