WIKIPEDIA2TEXT(1)

📦 version 0.14, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 WIKIPEDIA2TEXT(1) 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to the General Commands Manual entry for wikipedia2text — yes it's a section 1 command, yes it's iconic, let's get into it 🌸

✨ NAME ✨

wikipedia2text — literally just displays Wikipedia entries right there on your command line 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

wikipedia2text [-BCnNoOpPsSuU]  [-b prog]  [ {-c  | -i  | -I }  patt]
[-l lang]  [-W base-url]  [-X "browser options"]  Query

wikipedia2text  -o [-b prog]  [-l lang]  Query

wikipedia2text [-h]

wikipedia2text  -v

wikipedia2text  -r

🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

This manual page documents briefly the wikipedia2text command. Brief. But make it cute 🎀

So what does it DO? wikipedia2text fetches and renders Wikipedia articles using a text-mode web-browser — and rn it recognises elinks, links2, links, lynx and w3m — and then it displays the text of the article on STDOUT, or respectively in a pager. No browser window, no 47 tabs, no chaos. Just vibes and text 😌✨

💅 OPTIONS 💅

The program recognizes the following command line options — and yes, we're going through ALL of them, no skipping, that's the rule 📋

  • -b prog — Use program prog as the browser. You pick, it obeys 🫶
  • -B — Do NOT use the browser that's configured via configuration file or environment. Ignore the settings, bestie, we're going rogue 💀
  • -c patt, -I patt — Colorize case-sensitive pattern patt in the output. Uppercase matters here, fr fr 🌸
  • -C, -N — Colorize output. Full rainbow moment 🌈
  • -h — Show help and a summary of options. When in doubt, -h it out 💅
  • -i patt — Colorize case-insensitive pattern patt in the output. Any casing, we don't judge ✨
  • -l lang — use Wikipedia in language lang. Peep the Wikipedia Languages entry elsewhere in this document 👀
  • -n — Do not colorize output. Monochrome era 😔
  • -o — Open the Wikipedia page in the browser. Take it outside 🚶
  • -O — Do not open the Wikipedia page in the browser. Stay inside, stay cozy 🏠
  • -p — Use a pager (set by default). This is the default bestie, it's already on 💖
  • -P — Don't use a pager. Straight to STDOUT, no middleman 💅
  • -r — Display a random Wikipedia article. Gambling but make it educational 🎲
  • -s — Display only the summary of the Wikipedia article. TL;DR mode 👑
  • -S — Display the full content of the Wikipedia article and not only the summary. Give me EVERYTHING 📚
  • -u — Just print the URL of the Wikipedia page and exit. Link drop and dip 🔗
  • -U — Display the full content of the Wikipedia article and not only print the URL of the page. We're not doing the shortcut version 🚫
  • -v — Show version number. Number reveal ✨
  • -W base-url — use base-url as base URL for wikipedia (e.g. use a different wiki), querying this URL will happen by appending the search term. Different wiki? Different vibe? Sure 🌀
  • -X browser-options — pass through browser-options to browser, e.g. "-width 180".
⚠️ Warning: must be in quotes if multiple options should be passed; browser specific, not checked. So like, nobody's gonna catch you if it's wrong, but also nobody's gonna catch you if it's wrong 😭

🌸 ENVIRONMENT 🌸

The following environment variables are recognized — set them and they become the default behavior, lowkey powerful:

  • ABROWSER — Browser to use as default instead of to found or configured web browser. Your browser, your rules 🦋
  • IGNCASE — Default value for case-sensitivity of colorizing the output. Can be set to "true" or "false". Those are the only two options, don't get creative 💀
  • LOCAL — Default value for language in which Wikipedia should be used. Peep the Wikipedia Languages entry elsewhere in this document 👀
  • OUTPUTURL — Determines, if wikipedia2text should display only the URL of the Wikipedia article by default. Can be set to "true" or "false". Yep, "true" or "false", that's it 🎀
  • PAGER — Default value for pager to use. Can also be set to "true", in which case, wikipedia2text tries to figure out the appropriate pager, or "false", which means not to use a pager at all. Three moods: a pager, a mystery pager, or no pager 💅
  • SHORT — Determines, if wikipedia2text should display only the summary of the Wikipedia article by default. Can be set to "true" or "false" ✨
  • USEBROWSER — Determines, if wikipedia2text should open the Wikipedia page via openurl in the globally set default browser, i.e. Firefox or Konqueror, by default. Can be set to "true" or "false" 🔥

🎀 FILES 🎀

  • $HOME/.wikipedia2textrc — Will be sourced from wikipedia2text on startup. Should contain variable assignments. The same variables as for the environment are recognised. So basically, your lil config bestie that runs the second you start up 🫶

👑 WIKIPEDIA LANGUAGES 👑

wikipedia2text currently supports the following Wikipedia languages — the whole roster, no cuts, no skips:

  • af — Cape Dutch (Afrikaans)
  • als — Alemannic
  • ca — Catalan
  • cs — Czech
  • da — Danish
  • de — German
  • en — English
  • eo — Esperanto
  • es — Spanish
  • fi — Finnish
  • fr — French
  • hu — Hungarian
  • ia — Interlingua
  • is — Islandic
  • it — Italian
  • la — Latin
  • lb — Luxembourgian
  • nds — Low German
  • nl — Dutch
  • nn, no — Norwegian (Nynorsk and Bokmål)
  • pl — Polish
  • pt — Portuguese
  • rm — Rhaeto-Romanic
  • ro — Romanian
  • simple — Simple English
  • sk — Slovak
  • sl — Slovenian
  • sv — Swedish
  • tr — Turkish

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

elinks(1), links(1), links2(1), lynx(1), w3m(1) — the browser besties that make all this possible 💜

🌈 AUTHOR 🌈

wikipedia2text was written by Christian Brabandt <cb@256bit.org>. Patches also from Axel Beckert <abe@deuxchevaux.org> 👑

This manual page was written by Axel Beckert <abe@deuxchevaux.org> for the Debian system (but may be used by others). Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL), Version 2 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. So go forth and remix, legally 📜✨

On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.

💀 HISTORY 💀

wikipedia2text was first released by Christian Brabandt on in his blog (link to URL http://blog.256bit.org/archives/126-Wikipedia-in-der-Shell.html) with as script named wiki. Some users may find it useful to create an alias with that name for speeding up the typing of a wikipedia2text command if no other command of that name is present. Shorter name, same energy, iconic behavior tbh 🌟

⭐ OTHER INFO ⭐

The current version of wikipedia2text should be available at on Christian Brabandt's website (link to URL http://www.256bit.org/~chrisbra/wiki) . Go get the fresh version bestie 🍓

and that's the whole page!! 💖 we made it to the bottom of the General Commands Manual, and this page signs off as WIKIPEDIA2TEXT(1) — that's the manual name and the footer, so consider yourself fully oriented. go read some Wikipedia in your terminal, you absolute main character 👑✨

📦 where this page comes from