Tidy

See Also Using Tidy with PHP

Syntax Checking and Cleanup with Tidy

Tidy is a command-line tool and library (with GUI interfaces available) that is also integrated into Quanta+ editor. Using tidy, you can clean and correct the syntax of XML, XHTML, and HTML documents -- especially those found in the wild or authored by other applications such as Open Office or Microsoft Office.

Content authors should be familiar with using Tidy in one or more methods. Tidy can be the integrated option provided with Quanta 'Tools > HTML Tidy syntax checking' or Ctrl + Alt + T. It can be command-line driven by the configuration file. For Microsoft Windows, you can use HTML Tidy kit (http://www.chami.com/html-kit/)

This quick-ref is helpful to lookup tidy configuration options http://tidy.sourceforge.net/docs/quickref.html

In a team environment, you can publish/share a common tidy.rc so that everyone is using the same configuration. This combination of command-line options is pretty good:

tidy -m -i -wrap 120 -clean -bare -asxhtml myfile.html

-m

causes the file to be modified in place (if you don't want this, then omit the -m and specify an output file with "-o myfile-Tidied.html"

-i

creates an indented structure

-wrap 120

Lines will get wrapped at 120 characters

-clean

font tags will be replaced with styles

-bare

smart quotes and em dashes will get stripped

-asxhtml

the output will be XHTML compliant

To really clean up content coming from Microsoft Word, try the following

tidy -i -wrap 120 -bare -asxhtml -drop-empty-paras -drop-font-tags -drop-proprietary-attributes -word-2000 myfile.html

Help

The command tidy -h will print out the version, and usage hints below:

tidy -h
tidy [option...] [file...] [option...] [file...]
Utility to clean up and pretty print HTML/XHTML/XML
see http://tidy.sourceforge.net/

Options for HTML Tidy for Linux/x86 released on 12 April 2005:

File manipulation
-----------------
-output <file>, -o  write output to the specified <file>
<file>
-config <file>      set configuration options from the specified <file>
-file <file>, -f    write errors to the specified <file>
<file>
-modify, -m         modify the original input files

Processing directives
---------------------
-indent, -i         indent element content
-wrap <column>, -w  wrap text at the specified <column> (default is 68)
<column>
-upper, -u          force tags to upper case (default is lower case)
-clean, -c          replace FONT, NOBR and CENTER tags by CSS
-bare, -b           strip out smart quotes and em dashes, etc.
-numeric, -n        output numeric rather than named entities
-errors, -e         only show errors
-quiet, -q          suppress nonessential output
-omit               omit optional end tags
-xml                specify the input is well formed XML
-asxml, -asxhtml    convert HTML to well formed XHTML
-ashtml             force XHTML to well formed HTML
-access <level>     do additional accessibility checks (<level> =1, 2, 3)

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
-language <lang>    set the two-letter language code <lang> (for future use)

Miscellaneous
-------------
-version, -v        show the version of Tidy
-help, -h, -?       list the command line options
-xml-help           list the command line options in XML format
-help-config        list all configuration options
-xml-config         list all configuration options in XML format
-show-config        list the current configuration settings

Use --blah blarg for any configuration option "blah" with argument "blarg"

Input/Output default to stdin/stdout respectively
Single letter options apart from -f may be combined
as in:  tidy -f errs.txt -imu foo.html
For further info on HTML see http://www.w3.org/MarkUp

More More Info

See the project page at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp

Configuring Tidy

The command tidy -help-config will output a list of all the settings that you can put into a tidy resource configuration file (e.g. ~/.tidy.rc)

$ tidy -help-config

HTML Tidy Configuration Settings

Within a file, use the form:

wrap: 72
indent: no

When specified on the command line, use the form:

--wrap 72 --indent no

Name                        Type       Allowable values
==================================== ========================================
accessibility-check         enum       0 (Tidy Classic), 1 (Priority 1 Checks),
2 (Priority 2 Checks), 3 (Priority 3
Checks)
add-xml-decl                Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
add-xml-space               Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
alt-text                    String     -
ascii-chars                 Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
assume-xml-procins          Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
bare                        Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
break-before-br             Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
char-encoding               Encoding   raw, ascii, latin0, latin1, utf8,
iso2022, mac, win1252, ibm858, utf16le,
utf16be, utf16, big5, shiftjis
clean                       Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
css-prefix                  String     -
doctype                     DocType    omit, auto, strict, transitional, user
drop-empty-paras            Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
drop-font-tags              Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
drop-proprietary-attributes Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
enclose-block-text          Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
enclose-text                Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
error-file                  String     -
escape-cdata                Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
fix-backslash               Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
fix-bad-comments            Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
fix-uri                     Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
force-output                Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
gnu-emacs                   Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
gnu-emacs-file              String     -
hide-comments               Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
hide-endtags                Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
indent                      AutoBool   auto, y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
indent-attributes           Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
indent-cdata                Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
indent-spaces               Integer    0, 1, 2, ...
input-encoding              Encoding   raw, ascii, latin0, latin1, utf8,
iso2022, mac, win1252, ibm858, utf16le,
utf16be, utf16, big5, shiftjis
input-xml                   Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
join-classes                Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
join-styles                 Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
keep-time                   Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
language                    String     -
literal-attributes          Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
logical-emphasis            Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
lower-literals              Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
markup                      Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
merge-divs                  AutoBool   auto, y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
ncr                         Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
new-blocklevel-tags         Tag names  tagX, tagY, ...
new-empty-tags              Tag names  tagX, tagY, ...
new-inline-tags             Tag names  tagX, tagY, ...
new-pre-tags                Tag names  tagX, tagY, ...
newline                     enum       LF, CRLF, CR
numeric-entities            Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
output-bom                  AutoBool   auto, y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
output-encoding             Encoding   raw, ascii, latin0, latin1, utf8,
iso2022, mac, win1252, ibm858, utf16le,
utf16be, utf16, big5, shiftjis
output-file                 String     -
output-html                 Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
output-xhtml                Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
output-xml                  Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
punctuation-wrap            Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
quiet                       Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
quote-ampersand             Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
quote-marks                 Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
quote-nbsp                  Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
repeated-attributes         enum       keep-first, keep-last
replace-color               Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
show-body-only              Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
show-errors                 Integer    0, 1, 2, ...
show-warnings               Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
slide-style                 String     -
split                       Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
tab-size                    Integer    0, 1, 2, ...
tidy-mark                   Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
uppercase-attributes        Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
uppercase-tags              Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
vertical-space              Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
word-2000                   Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
wrap                        Integer    0 (no wrapping), 1, 2, ...
wrap-asp                    Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
wrap-attributes             Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
wrap-jste                   Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
wrap-php                    Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
wrap-script-literals        Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
wrap-sections               Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0
write-back                  Boolean    y/n, yes/no, t/f, true/false, 1/0

Defaults

To see what configuration values are presently set (could well be the defaults if you're not using a configuration file)

tidy -show-config

Extensible Markup Language = a system for markup such that you can create your own 'schema' of terms rather than a specific markup language.

HyperText Markup Language = structured text that uses logical links (hyperlinks) between nodes containing text.

Cascading Style Sheets = A technology that deals with the presentation of content on the web