From: Chris Gehlker <canyonrat@...>
Date: 2006-07-31T22:17:44+09:00
Subject: Hpricot question

I'm trying to use Hpricot to clean up the text in a big site full of  
old-style HTML. I'm just trying to do things like replacing literal  
quote characters with <q> and </q>. I'm hampered by the fact that my  
understanding of the HTML DOM comes from reading one web site  
yesterday and I don't know any javascript. Nonetheless, it seems that  
Hpricot should be able to easily give me all the text in the <body>  
element of each page because it has a traverse_text() method. The  
problem seems to be that if I apply it to a whole page, I get the  
text in the <head> element and all the methods for selecting seem to  
return an element, not a tree.

There is a get_subnode method but it doesn't seem to work as expected.

Thanks in advance for any help

--
The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a  
proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and  
oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
-Paul Valery, poet and philosopher (1871-1945)