After discussing the topic of converting Word's HTML horror into valid and clean HTML in node Converting Word97 (or later) exported HTML to valid HTML and CB, I decided to further use a solution using that excellent HTML::TreeBuilder module.

Its advantage over tidy and others is that I can configure which tags, elements and attributes to drop. I also noticed that tidy surrendered over some special word files while HTML::TreeBuilder did not. The drawback is speed, of course.

Just to complete, here some directions to alternative solutions given by fellow monks (thanks to all):

alex pleiner <alex@zeitform.de>
zeitform Internet Dienste

#### configuration ####
# attributes to ignore
my @ignore_attr =
    qw(bgcolor background color face style link alink 
       vlink text onblur onchange onclick ondblclick 
       onfocus onkeydown onkeyup onload onmousedown 
       onmousemove onmouseout onmouseover onmouseup
       onreset onselect onunload class xmlns:w xmlns:o 
       xmlns
      );

# tags to ignore
my @ignore_tags = 
    qw(font big small body dir html div span);

# tags to drop with content
my @ignore_elements = 
    qw(script style head o:p);


############################################################
sub clean_up_htmltree {
############################################################

  my $input = shift;
  my $warn = 0; 
  my $htmlex; 
  use HTML::TreeBuilder;

  my $h = HTML::TreeBuilder->new;
  $h->ignore_unknown(0);
  $h->warn($warn);
  $h->parse($input);

  # drop all unwanted tags
  foreach (@Conf::ignore_tags) {
    $htmlex = 1, next if lc($_) eq "html"; # remove <html>...</html>?
    while (my $ok = $h->look_down('_tag', "$_")) { 
      $ok->replace_with_content; 
    }
  }

  # drop all unwanted elements (tags w/ content)
  foreach (@Conf::ignore_elements) {
    while (my $ok = $h->look_down('_tag', "$_")) { 
      $ok->detach; 
    }
  }

  # drop all unwanted attributes
  foreach my $attr (@Conf::ignore_attr) {
    while (my $ok = $h->look_down( sub { defined($_[0]->attr($attr)) }
+ )) { 
      $ok->attr($attr, undef);
    }
  }

  # drop unwanted script code <![....]>
  foreach my $ok ( $h->look_down( sub { grep { /^<\s*!\[.+?\]\s*>$/ } 
+$_[0]->content_list } ) ) {
    $ok->detach_content; 
  }


  my $output = $h->as_HTML(undef, " ", {}); 
  # params = entities to encode, indent, optional endtags
  $h = $h->delete(); # nuke it!
  if ($htmlex) {
    $output =~ s:^\s*<html>::m;
    $output =~ s:</html>\s*$::m;
  }
  return $output;
}

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In reply to Converting and cleaning Word's HTML export to valid HTML by projekt21

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