GNU Emacs manual in plain text

GNU Emacs manual in plain text

[Raffaele Ricciardi]

Hi guys,

the GNU Emacs Manual is not available in compressed plain text any
longer.

I am looking for the plain text version because I would like to read
it in Enriched Mode, and highlight passages and add notes.

I have failed to convert the HTML version to plain text with both the
`html2text' Emacs command and two external utilities.  Maybe I could
try with either the Texinfo or the Info version?  If so then how?

Thank you.

Re: GNU Emacs manual in plain text

[kastian]

On Mon, Jun 09, 2014 at 01:57:49PM +0200, Raffaele Ricciardi wrote:
> Hi guys,
> 
> the GNU Emacs Manual is not available in compressed plain text any
> longer.
> 
> I am looking for the plain text version because I would like to read
> it in Enriched Mode, and highlight passages and add notes.

Hello!
w3m -dump -T 'text/html' hmtl-file > text-file
Or smth like with another text-based browser like lynx, links etc?

> 
> I have failed to convert the HTML version to plain text with both the
> `html2text' Emacs command and two external utilities.  Maybe I could
> try with either the Texinfo or the Info version?  If so then how?
> 
> Thank you.
> 

Re: GNU Emacs manual in plain text

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Raffaele Ricciardi <rfflrccrd@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2014 13:57:49 +0200
> 
> I have failed to convert the HTML version to plain text with both the
> `html2text' Emacs command and two external utilities.  Maybe I could
> try with either the Texinfo or the Info version?  If so then how?

You can create a plain text version from the Texinfo sources by
running 'makeinfo' with the --plaintext option.

Re: GNU Emacs manual in plain text

[Emanuel Berg]

kastian@mail.ru writes:

> w3m -dump -T 'text/html' hmtl-file > text-file

You can also use Emacs-w3m for this. Navigate to the
URL, then `C-x w' (write-file) and save it to, say,
page.txt. Check what kind of file it is with 'file'. If
it says it is UTF-8 or whatever, you can use 'recode -f
ascii page.txt'. (-f will drop things that cannot be
recoded.)

Emacs-w3m and recode has to be aptituded from the
repositories.

-- 
underground experts united:
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: GNU Emacs manual in plain text

[Emanuel Berg]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:

> You can also use Emacs-w3m for this. Navigate to the
> URL, then `C-x w' (write-file) and save it to, say,
> page.txt. Check what kind of file it is with
> 'file'. If it says it is UTF-8 or whatever, you can
> use 'recode -f ascii page.txt'. (-f will drop things
> that cannot be recoded.)
>
> Emacs-w3m and recode has to be aptituded from the
> repositories.

Oh, I forgot to mention, 'fold' is useful to change the
length of the lines - 55 chars is perhaps a good digit
- remember, it shouldn't be too wide - just think of
newspaper and magazine articles which typically have
something like three columns for a split A3 - all to
increase readability. (Though to get the max of it, I
think you have to write in a certain way as well...)
Anyway:

fold -s -w 55 old_file.txt > new_file.txt

-w (--width) is to set the desired length (in chars)

-s (--spaces) is to tell fold to break lines at spaces

This would be the last step before

lpr -P $LPDEST page.txt

and then you get to do the absolutely best part: to
read it :)

-- 
underground experts united:
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: GNU Emacs manual in plain text

[Raffaele Ricciardi]

On 09/06/14 16:44, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> From: Raffaele Ricciardi <rfflrccrd@gmail.com>
>> Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2014 13:57:49 +0200
>>
>> I have failed to convert the HTML version to plain text with both the
>> `html2text' Emacs command and two external utilities.  Maybe I could
>> try with either the Texinfo or the Info version?  If so then how?
>
> You can create a plain text version from the Texinfo sources by
> running 'makeinfo' with the --plaintext option.
>

Perfect.  This way, the resulting text document looks the closest to 
what plain-text versions of the manual looked in the past.  Thanks.