Install html-xml-utils with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• asc2xml
• hxaddid
• hxcite
• hxcite-mkbib
• hxclean
• hxcopy
• hxcount
• hxextract
• hxincl
• hxindex
• hxmkbib
• hxmultitoc
• hxname2id
• hxnormalize
• hxnsxml
• hxnum
• hxpipe
• hxprintlinks
• hxprune
• hxref
• hxremove
• hxselect
• hxtabletrans
• hxtoc
• hxuncdata
• hxunent
• hxunpipe
• hxunxmlns
• hxwls
• hxxmlns
• xml2asc

Project history

The W3C distribution page describes the project as source tarballs for HTML and XML utilities, with older pre-0.1 releases named htmlutils. A major naming transition happened at version 5.0, when most programs received the hx prefix, which made the suite's command names more consistent and easier to package together.

The W3C ChangeLog records ongoing maintenance by Bert Bos, including releases in the 8.x line and bug fixes for tools such as hxselect, hxnormalize, hxcopy, and hxwls. The W3C software news archive highlights feature work such as expanded CSS selector support in hxselect and hxremove, HTML parsing support in hxpipe, and fixes for attribute selector handling.

Adoption history

The W3C README explicitly notes precompiled packages in Debian, Ubuntu, MacPorts, and other systems. Homebrew, Alpine, Debian, Fedora-family, Nix, Arch, and openSUSE package metadata show the suite has been carried by many Unix-like package collections, which is typical for small C utilities that fill scripting gaps.

How it is used

The commands cover tasks such as adding IDs, extracting selected elements, normalizing markup, expanding includes, producing link lists, converting entities, building tables of contents, and selecting nodes with CSS selectors. The result is a toolbox for shell scripts that need to touch HTML or XML without writing a bespoke parser.

Why package nerds care

For package maintainers and CLI users, html-xml-utils sits in the same cultural space as tidy, xmllint, pup, and xmlstarlet: it is small, scriptable, and installable as one package that exposes many focused commands. The hxselect command is especially recognizable because it gives CSS-selector extraction to shell pipelines.

Timeline

• 2001: The W3C download directory preserves old htmlutils material before the html-xml-utils 0.1 naming line.
• Version 5.0: Most utilities were renamed with the hx prefix.
• 2017: Version 7.2 and 7.4 expanded CSS selector support and improved hxselect and hxremove behavior.
• 2022: Version 8.3 added HTML parsing support to hxpipe, and version 8.4 fixed ::attr() selector handling.
• 2025: Version 8.7 fixed hxnormalize line-length behavior.
• 2026: The W3C ChangeLog records version 8.8 maintenance.

Related projects

• Related command-line markup tools include HTML Tidy for cleanup, libxml2's xmllint for XML validation and XPath work, xmlstarlet for XML transformations, and selector-oriented tools such as pup.

Sources

• Homebrew and distribution package pages support package-manager adoption.
• W3C README and directory listing document the source distribution, old htmlutils naming, package-manager availability, hx prefix change, and command list.
• W3C SoftwareNews and ChangeLog document 7.x and 8.x release evolution.