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albright
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 1:13 am    Post subject: stop `less` interpreting html [SOLVED] Reply with quote

Sorry for this elementary question, but the answer does
not leap off the man page for me.

When I use less on an html file it produces something like
this when it encounters a numbered list:

Code:
3. What is the difference between "knowledge skepticism" and "rational
     belief" skepticism?
  4.



  5. Outline the problem that Hume sees with inductive arguments.
  6.



  7. Define 'high reliability' for a method of inference.


How can I stop this pointless, stupid and incompetent
behaviour and have less display a text file as a G**D***
text file?
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Last edited by albright on Sun Nov 11, 2012 12:28 am; edited 1 time in total
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Hypnos
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 1:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I cannot reproduce the behavior you observe. Here's my HTML file:

Code:
<html>
<head><title>foo</title></head>

<body>
<ol>
<li> Moo
<li> Cow
<li> Bar
</ol>
</body>
</html>


The display in less looks identical.

Are you sure your HTML file just doesn't have a numbered list written out explicitly?
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srs5694
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 2:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Code:

less -L infile.html
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albright
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 1:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

thanks for the reply; this is more interesting than it looks then

Here is how "my" less shows your html file:

Code:
 
1. Moo
2. Cow
3. Bar


(mine had some <br>s in it which made the list so messed up
when less tried to interpret it)

`more` displays text files as text files I've discovered

my less is version 451 (sys-apps/less)
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albright
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 1:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I found the reason:

the variable $LESSOPEN=|lesspipe %s

once I clear that, less behaves properly

but I'm stumped at what is setting $LESSOPEN (I
may have done it myself in some distant past
I must admit :) )

EDIT: /etc/profile.env sets $LESSOPEN

EDIT2: editing /env.d/70less fixes it
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Hypnos
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 2:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm using less version 436. But, my /etc/env.d/70less has the same settings:

Code:
LESSOPEN="|lesspipe.sh %s"
LESS="-R -M --shift 5"


However, my /usr/bin/lesspipe.sh has no rule for HTML files.
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albright
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 4:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

this is fairly interesting

there are two html2text programs:

dev-python/html2text
app-text/html2text

I had the latter installed and it messes up at least some html
files when it textifies them.

I switched to dev-python/html2text and it renders better IMO
(I had to edit lesspipe.sh's call to html2text slightly since as it
stands it sets a non-existent option for the python version)

But that's not the end.

On my x86 laptop, less also renders html text (and does a pretty
good job) BUT no text2html program is installed ... (wtf?)


EDIT: less is using lynx on the laptop which is not installed on
my desktop - everything is illuminated :)
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khayyam
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 11:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

albright ...

the standard 'lesspipe' (at least the version supplied with gentoo) does not provide the means to disable the conversion, so the *.html is paged as parsed through the less filter (html2txt, w3m, elinks, etc). If you install Wolfgang Friebel's lesspipe any filtering can be disabled by appending a colon to the filename, eg: "less file.html:"

best ... khay
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