Hypertext Legacy File Converter "HTLFC" converts the following file types into a single .html file:
.maff - Mozilla Archive File Format, as produced by the Firefox extension of the same name..mht|.mhtml - MIME Hypertext..war - Web ARchive as produced by the KDE Konqueror web browser (other sources of .war files have not been tested).file+dir - web page saved as filename.html plus filename_files/ directory (the native "Save As" format provided by Firefox and Chrome).The original use case for HTLFC emerged when Mozilla discontinued their legacy API; essential to the Firefox MAFF extension which thus became obsolete. Some users were left with collections of .maff and .mht files which could no longer be opened in the absence of that extension.
Obviously HTLFC may also be used to open and/or convert hypertext files from other sources.
When opening the file+dir combination, the associated directory should be filename_word/ where _word would be _files from a source configured for English. Supporting non-English source material, HTLFC will search for a filename directory suffixed by an underscore followed by an alphabetic string.
HTLFC makes two passes:
.html file.The user may examine the unpacked content between passes. Use either --pause option from the command line, or select "Unpack and Open Browser" from the graphical interface.
Nested iframes may only be in-lined two levels deep. When the output is written, the first level will be enclosed in double quotes ( " ) within this, the second level will be enclosed in single quotes ( ' ). Should a file contain a third level, an error will be reported without generating any output. This does not apply when using the browser to examine the first pass.
Sometimes having been unpacked, a file will not render properly, however after conversion, the resulting .html is correct. It is likely that the web page ran a script which created a run time environment - this environment is missing from the unpacked material resulting in errors. Upon conversion, all available resources are in-lined regardless of missing environment variables. The GUI option may be used to examine the unpacked and converted versions one at a time.
When presented with a filename ending in .html an attempt is made to locate a directory named filename_word on assumption that _word may be _files, however, refer to the non-English use case above. Should the working directory contain a sub-directory in the form filename_other, it is possible that htlfc will wrongly identify that directory during conversion and fail.
These instructions invoke HTLFC simply as htlfc. Depending on the user's environment, it may be necessary to include the full path to the executable.
Try this from the command line:
$ htlfc infile outfile
Where infile is one of the supported hypertext formats and (the optional) outfile will contain the result of conversion.
When outfile is not specified, the result would be saved to infile.html - unless infile.html represented file+dir format, then it's output filename would be mangled to avoid overwriting the input.
Useful command line options:
-h | --help- brief usage summary.
-p | --pause- examine the input after unpack.
-v | --version- report latest release plus any recent commits.
To examine the unpacked infile with the default browser of your operating system:
$ htlfc --browser infile
$ htlfc -b infile- examine result of pass 1, the unpacked files.
$ htlfc-b infile- as above ...
Hint: rather than permanently converting your archived hypertext files, create a file association between htlfc-b and each of the supported file types. When opening one of these files through a file manager, HTLFC will launch your browser with the unpacked file.
Select your input and output files through a graphical dialogue:
$ htlfc --gui
$ htlfc -g
This interface offers an assisted workflow whereby HTLFC will look for all files under a specified directory. Then, for each file found, the user may:
Follow the instructions at INSTALL
HTLFC is licensed under AGLPv3 in accordance with the file LICENSE in the root directory of the project. Choice of license is explained at AboutLicense
Developer does not expect to grow the product. However, contributions to that end are welcome as described in CONTRIBUTING