use HTML::TreeBuilder;
use HTML::FormatText;
use Encode;
sub HTML_to_text {
my $content = shift;
my $html = HTML::TreeBuilder->new;
$content = '' . $content . ''
unless $content =~ m/]*>/i;
$html->parse( decode("utf8", $content) ); # this is necessary otherwise UTF8 chars get hamburgered,
my $formatter = HTML::FormatText->new;
my $out = _trim($formatter->format($html)); # trim is a selective trimmer that preserves some kinds of whitespace, delete this if you don't need it.
return $out;
}