tidy (1) - Linux Manuals

tidy: check, correct, and pretty-print HTML(5) files

Command to display tidy manual in Linux: $ man 1 tidy

NAME

tidy - check, correct, and pretty-print

HTML(5) files

SYNOPSIS

tidy [options] [file ...] [options] [file ...] ...

DESCRIPTION

Tidy reads HTML, XHTML, and XML files and writes cleaned-up markup. For HTML variants, it detects, reports, and corrects many common coding errors and strives to produce visually equivalent markup that is both conformant to the HTML specifications and that works in most browsers.

A common use of Tidy is to convert plain HTML to XHTML. For generic XML files, Tidy is limited to correcting basic well-formedness errors and pretty printing.

If no input file is specified, Tidy reads the standard input. If no output file is specified, Tidy writes the tidied markup to the standard output. If no error file is specified, Tidy writes messages to the standard error.

OPTIONS

Tidy supports two different kinds of options. Purely command-line options, starting with a single dash '-', can only be used on the command-line, not in configuration files. They are listed in the first part of this section. Configuration options, on the other hand, can either be passed on the command line, starting with two dashes --, or specified in a configuration file, using the option name without the starting dashes. They are listed in the second part of this section.

For command-line options that expect a numerical argument, a default is assumed if no meaningful value can be found. On the other hand, configuration options cannot be used without a value; a configuration option without a value is simply discarded and reported as an error.

Using a command-line option is sometimes equivalent to setting the value of a configuration option. The equivalent option and value are shown in parentheses in the list below, as they would appear in a configuration file. For example, -quiet, -q (quiet: yes) means that using the command-line option -quiet or -q is equivalent to setting the configuration option quiet to yes.

Single-letter command-line options without an associated value can be combined; for example '-i', '-m' and '-u' may be combined as '-imu'.

File manipulation

-output <%s>, -o <%s> (output-file: <%s>): write output to the specified <file>
-config <%s>: set configuration options from the specified <file>
-file <%s>, -f <%s> (error-file: <%s>): write errors and warnings to the specified <file>
-modify, -m (write-back: yes): modify the original input files

Processing directives

-indent, -i (indent: auto): indent element content
-wrap <%s>, -w <%s> (wrap: <%s>): wrap text at the specified <column>. 0 is assumed if <column> is missing. When this option is omitted, the default of the configuration option 'wrap' applies.
-upper, -u (uppercase-tags: yes): force tags to upper case
-clean, -c (clean: yes): replace FONT, NOBR and CENTER tags with CSS
-bare, -b (bare: yes): strip out smart quotes and em dashes, etc.
-gdoc, -g (gdoc: yes): produce clean version of html exported by Google Docs
-numeric, -n (numeric-entities: yes): output numeric rather than named entities
-errors, -e (markup: no): show only errors and warnings
-quiet, -q (quiet: yes): suppress nonessential output
-omit (omit-optional-tags: yes): omit optional start tags and end tags
-xml (input-xml: yes): specify the input is well formed XML
-asxml, -asxhtml (output-xhtml: yes): convert HTML to well formed XHTML
-ashtml (output-html: yes): force XHTML to well formed HTML
-access <%s> (accessibility-check: <%s>): do additional accessibility checks (<level> = 0, 1, 2, 3). 0 is assumed if <level> is missing.

Character encodings

-raw: output values above 127 without conversion to entities
-ascii: use ISO-8859-1 for input, US-ASCII for output
-latin0: use ISO-8859-15 for input, US-ASCII for output
-latin1: use ISO-8859-1 for both input and output
-iso2022: use ISO-2022 for both input and output
-utf8: use UTF-8 for both input and output
-mac: use MacRoman for input, US-ASCII for output
-win1252: use Windows-1252 for input, US-ASCII for output
-ibm858: use IBM-858 (CP850+Euro) for input, US-ASCII for output
-utf16le: use UTF-16LE for both input and output
-utf16be: use UTF-16BE for both input and output
-utf16: use UTF-16 for both input and output
-big5: use Big5 for both input and output
-shiftjis: use Shift_JIS for both input and output

Miscellaneous

-version, -v: show the version of Tidy
-help, -h, -?: list the command line options
-help-config: list all configuration options
-show-config: list the current configuration settings
-help-option <%s>: show a description of the <option>
-language <%s> (language: <%s>): set Tidy's output language to <lang>. Specify '-language help' for more help. Use before output-causing arguments to ensure the language takes effect, e.g.,`tidy -lang es -lang help`.

XML

-xml-help: list the command line options in XML format
-xml-config: list all configuration options in XML format
-xml-strings: output all of Tidy's strings in XML format
-xml-error-strings: output error constants and strings in XML format
-xml-options-strings: output option descriptions in XML format

Configuration options can be specified by preceding each option with -- at the command line, followed by its desired value, OR by placing the options and values in a configuration file, and telling tidy to read that file with the -config option:

tidy --option1 value1 --option2 value2 ...
tidy -config config-file ...

Configuration options can be conveniently grouped in a single config file. A Tidy configuration file is simply a text file, where each option is listed on a separate line in the form

option1: value1
option2: value2
etc.

The permissible values for a given option depend on the option's Type. There are five Types: Boolean, AutoBool, DocType, Enum, and String. Boolean Types allow any of yes/no, y/n, true/false, t/f, 1/0. AutoBools allow auto in addition to the values allowed by Booleans. Integer Types take non-negative integers. String Types generally have no defaults, and you should provide them in non-quoted form (unless you wish the output to contain the literal quotes).

Enum, Encoding, and DocType Types have a fixed repertoire of items, which are listed in the Supported values sections below.

You only need to provide options and values for those whose defaults you wish to override, although you may wish to include some already-defaulted options and values for the sake of documentation and explicitness.

Here is a sample config file, with at least one example of each of the five Types:

// sample Tidy configuration options
output-xhtml: yes
add-xml-decl: no
doctype: strict
char-encoding: ascii
indent: auto
wrap: 76
repeated-attributes: keep-last
error-file: errs.txt

Below is a summary and brief description of each of the options. They are listed alphabetically within each category.

HTML, XHTML, XML options

--add-xml-decl Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should add the XML declaration when outputting XML or XHTML.

Note that if the input already includes an <?xml ... ?> declaration then this option will be ignored.

If the encoding for the output is different from ascii, one of the utf* encodings, or raw, then the declaration is always added as required by the XML standard.

See also: --char-encoding, --output-encoding

--add-xml-space Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should add xml:space="preserve" to elements such as <pre>, <style> and <script> when generating XML.

This is needed if the whitespace in such elements is to be parsed appropriately without having access to the DTD.

--alt-text String

This option specifies the default alt= text Tidy uses for <img> attributes when the alt= attribute is missing.

Use with care, as it is your responsibility to make your documents accessible to people who cannot see the images.

--anchor-as-name Boolean (yes if unset)

This option controls the deletion or addition of the name attribute in elements where it can serve as anchor.

If set to yes a name attribute, if not already existing, is added along an existing id attribute if the DTD allows it.

If set to no any existing name attribute is removed if an id attribute exists or has been added.

--assume-xml-procins Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should change the parsing of processing instructions to require ?> as the terminator rather than >.

This option is automatically set if the input is in XML.

--bare Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should strip Microsoft specific HTML from Word 2000 documents, and output spaces rather than non-breaking spaces where they exist in the input.

--clean Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should perform cleaning of some legacy presentational tags (currently <i>, <b>, <center> when enclosed within appropriate inline tags, and <font>). If set to yes then legacy tags will be replaced with CSS <style> tags and structural markup as appropriate.

--coerce-endtags Boolean (yes if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should coerce a start tag into an end tag in cases where it looks like an end tag was probably intended; for example, given

<span>foo <b>bar<b> baz</span>

Tidy will output

<span>foo <b>bar</b> baz</span>

--css-prefix String

This option specifies the prefix that Tidy uses for styles rules.

By default, c will be used.

--decorate-inferred-ul Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should decorate inferred <ul> elements with some CSS markup to avoid indentation to the right.

--doctype DocType (auto if unset)

Supported values: html5, omit, auto, strict, transitional, user

This option specifies the DOCTYPE declaration generated by Tidy.

If set to omit the output won't contain a DOCTYPE declaration. Note this this also implies numeric-entities is set to yes.

If set to html5 the DOCTYPE is set to <!DOCTYPE html>.

If set to auto (the default) Tidy will use an educated guess based upon the contents of the document.

If set to strict, Tidy will set the DOCTYPE to the HTML4 or XHTML1 strict DTD.

If set to loose, the DOCTYPE is set to the HTML4 or XHTML1 loose (transitional) DTD.

Alternatively, you can supply a string for the formal public identifier (FPI).

For example:

doctype: "-//ACME//DTD HTML 3.14159//EN"

If you specify the FPI for an XHTML document, Tidy will set the system identifier to an empty string. For an HTML document, Tidy adds a system identifier only if one was already present in order to preserve the processing mode of some browsers. Tidy leaves the DOCTYPE for generic XML documents unchanged.

This option does not offer a validation of document conformance.

--drop-empty-elements Boolean (yes if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should discard empty elements.

--drop-empty-paras Boolean (yes if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should discard empty paragraphs.

--drop-font-tags Boolean (no if unset)

Deprecated; do not use. This option is destructive to <font> tags, and it will be removed from future versions of Tidy. Use the clean option instead.

If you do set this option despite the warning it will perform as clean except styles will be inline instead of put into a CSS class. <font> tags will be dropped completely and their styles will not be preserved.

If both clean and this option are enabled, <font> tags will still be dropped completely, and other styles will be preserved in a CSS class instead of inline.

See clean for more information.

--drop-proprietary-attributes Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should strip out proprietary attributes, such as Microsoft data binding attributes. Additionally attributes that aren't permitted in the output version of HTML will be dropped if used with strict-tags-attributes.

--enclose-block-text Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should insert a <p> element to enclose any text it finds in any element that allows mixed content for HTML transitional but not HTML strict.

--enclose-text Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should enclose any text it finds in the body element within a <p> element.

This is useful when you want to take existing HTML and use it with a style sheet.

--escape-cdata Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should convert <![CDATA[]]> sections to normal text.

--fix-backslash Boolean (yes if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should replace backslash characters \ in URLs with forward slashes /.

--fix-bad-comments Boolean (yes if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should replace unexpected hyphens with = characters when it comes across adjacent hyphens.

The default is yes.

This option is provided for users of Cold Fusion which uses the comment syntax: .

--fix-uri Boolean (yes if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should check attribute values that carry URIs for illegal characters and if such are found, escape them as HTML4 recommends.

--gdoc Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should enable specific behavior for cleaning up HTML exported from Google Docs.

--hide-comments Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should print out comments.

--hide-endtags Boolean (no if unset)

This option is an alias for omit-optional-tags.

--indent-cdata Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should indent <![CDATA[]]> sections.

--input-xml Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should use the XML parser rather than the error correcting HTML parser.

--join-classes Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should combine class names to generate a single, new class name if multiple class assignments are detected on an element.

--join-styles Boolean (yes if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should combine styles to generate a single, new style if multiple style values are detected on an element.

--literal-attributes Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies how Tidy deals with whitespace characters within attribute values.

If the value is no Tidy normalizes attribute values by replacing any newline or tab with a single space, and further by replacing any contiguous whitespace with a single space.

To force Tidy to preserve the original, literal values of all attributes and ensure that whitespace within attribute values is passed through unchanged, set this option to yes.

--logical-emphasis Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should replace any occurrence of <i> with <em> and any occurrence of <b> with <strong>. Any attributes are preserved unchanged.

This option can be set independently of the clean option.

--lower-literals Boolean (yes if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should convert the value of an attribute that takes a list of predefined values to lower case.

This is required for XHTML documents.

--merge-divs AutoBool (auto if unset)

This option can be used to modify the behavior of clean when set to yes.

This option specifies if Tidy should merge nested <div> such as <div><div>...</div></div>.

If set to auto the attributes of the inner <div> are moved to the outer one. Nested <div> with id attributes are not merged.

If set to yes the attributes of the inner <div> are discarded with the exception of class and style.

See also: --clean, --merge-spans

--merge-emphasis Boolean (yes if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should merge nested <b> and <i> elements; for example, for the case

<b class="rtop-2">foo <b class="r2-2">bar</b> baz</b>,

Tidy will output <b class="rtop-2">foo bar baz</b>.

--merge-spans AutoBool (auto if unset)

This option can be used to modify the behavior of clean when set to yes.

This option specifies if Tidy should merge nested <span> such as <span><span>...</span></span>.

The algorithm is identical to the one used by merge-divs.

Diagnostics options

--accessibility-check enum (0 (Tidy Classic) if unset)

Supported values: 0 (Tidy Classic), 1 (Priority 1 Checks), 2 (Priority 2 Checks), 3 (Priority 3 Checks)

This option specifies what level of accessibility checking, if any, that Tidy should perform.

Level 0 (Tidy Classic) is equivalent to Tidy Classic's accessibility checking.

For more information on Tidy's accessibility checking, visit Tidy's Accessibility Page at http://www.html-tidy.org/accessibility/.

--show-errors Integer (6 if unset)

This option specifies the number Tidy uses to determine if further errors should be shown. If set to 0, then no errors are shown.

--show-info Boolean (yes if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should display info-level messages.

--show-warnings Boolean (yes if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should suppress warnings. This can be useful when a few errors are hidden in a flurry of warnings.

Pretty Print options

--break-before-br Boolean (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should output a line break before each <br> element.

--escape-scripts Boolean (yes if unset)

This option causes items that look like closing tags, like </g to be escaped to <\/g. Set this option to 'no' if you do not want this.

--indent AutoBool (no if unset)

This option specifies if Tidy should indent block-level tags.

If set to auto Tidy will decide whether or not to indent the content of tags such as <title>, <h1>-<h6>, <li>, <td>, or <p> based on the content including a block-level element.

Setting indent to yes can expose layout bugs in some browsers.

Use the option indent-spaces to control the number of spaces or tabs output per level of indent, and indent-with-tabs to specify whether spaces or tabs are used.

Character Encoding options

--ascii-chars Boolean (no if unset)

Can be used to modify behavior of the clean option when set to yes.

If set to yes when using clean, &emdash;, ”, and other named character entities are downgraded to their closest ASCII equivalents.

Miscellaneous options

--error-file String

This option specifies the error file Tidy uses for errors and warnings. Normally errors and warnings are output to stderr.

ENVIRONMENT

HTML_TIDY: Name of the default configuration file. This should be an absolute path, since you will probably invoke tidy from different directories. The value of HTML_TIDY will be parsed after the compiled-in default (defined with -DTIDY_CONFIG_FILE), but before any of the files specified using -config.

EXIT STATUS

0: All input files were processed successfully.
1: There were warnings.
2: There were errors.

AUTHOR

Tidy was written by Dave Raggett <dsr [at] w3.org>, and subsequently maintained by a team at http://tidy.sourceforge.net/, and now maintained by HTACG (http://www.htacg.org).

The sources for HTML Tidy are available at https://github.com/htacg/tidy-html5/ under the MIT Licence.