webdump.1: improve documentation - webdump - HTML to plain-text converter for webpages
HTML git clone git://git.codemadness.org/webdump
DIR Log
DIR Files
DIR Refs
DIR README
DIR LICENSE
---
DIR commit a783b92e0a1bf52e63191f0f173cc8d77e9a6851
DIR parent 437d217ea2b9d5669418960d3f39e183860862c5
HTML Author: Hiltjo Posthuma <hiltjo@codemadness.org>
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2026 19:42:39 +0200
webdump.1: improve documentation
rewording and add examples.
Diffstat:
M webdump.1 | 50 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----
1 file changed, 43 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)
---
DIR diff --git a/webdump.1 b/webdump.1
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-.Dd October 6, 2023
+.Dd July 2, 2026
.Dt WEBDUMP 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
@@ -26,7 +26,9 @@ The options are as follows:
Use UTF-8 symbols for certain items like bullet items and rulers to make the
output fancier.
.It Fl a
-Toggle ANSI escape codes usage, by default it is not enabled.
+Toggle ANSI escape codes.
+This is is used to markup text with bold, italic, underline, etc, by default
+it is not enabled.
.It Fl b Ar baseurl
Base URL of links.
This is used to make links absolute.
@@ -45,6 +47,9 @@ Toggle if link references are displayed at the bottom or not, by default it is
not enabled.
.It Fl r
Toggle if line-wrapping mode is enabled, by default it is not enabled.
+This uses the terminal width which can be specified with the
+.Fl w
+option.
.It Fl s
CSS-like selectors, this sets a reader mode to show only content matching the
selector, see the section
@@ -61,10 +66,14 @@ Multiple selectors can be specified by separating them with a comma.
The terminal width.
The default is 77 characters.
.It Fl x
-Write resources as TAB-separated lines to file descriptor 3.
+Extract and write each resource (such as links and images) to file
+descriptor 3.
+The items are output per line in a TAB-separated format.
+The fields are: type TAB v|h TAB url NEWLINE.
+v or h indicates a visible or hidden element.
.El
.Sh SELECTOR SYNTAX
-The syntax has some inspiration from CSS, but it is more limited.
+Some inspiration was taken from the CSS syntax, but it is more limited.
Some examples:
.Bl -item
.It
@@ -90,16 +99,43 @@ Note that this differs from filtering on a collection of "li" elements.
.Sh EXIT STATUS
.Ex -std
.Sh EXAMPLES
+Fetch a webpage using
+.Xr curl 1
+and pipe the output to
+.Nm
+enabling line-wrapping and writing output to the pager
+.Xr less 1 :
.Bd -literal
url='https://codemadness.org/sfeed.html'
-
curl -s "$url" | webdump -r -b "$url" | less
-
+.Ed
+.Pp
+Pipe the HTML output to
+.Nm
+enabling many options (unicode and markup, line-wrapping, link references).
+Transform relative URLs to absolute URLs using the base URL.
+Then pipe it to
+.Xr less 1
+with the
+.Fl R
+option to enable ANSI escape codes in this pager:
+.Bd -literal
curl -s "$url" | webdump -8 -a -i -l -r -b "$url" | less -R
-
+.Ed
+.Pp
+Use a simple selector using the
+.Fl s
+option to only show content in the "main" tag:
+.Bd -literal
curl -s "$url" | webdump -s 'main' -8 -a -i -l -r -b "$url" | less -R
.Ed
.Pp
+To write resources as TAB-separated lines from file descriptor 3 to a separate
+file while ignoring the regular standard output:
+.Bd -literal
+curl -s "$url" | webdump -x -b "$url" 3>urls >/dev/null
+.Ed
+.Pp
To use
.Nm
as a HTML to text filter for example in the mutt mail client, change in