Re: Bug: New HTML exporter incorrect attributes

[Nicolas Goaziou <n.goaziou@gmail.com>]

tftorrey@tftorrey.com (T.F. Torrey) writes:

>> You don't assign attributes to an image in a paragraph, you assign
>> attributes to the paragraph itself.
>
> It would be nice if there actually was a way to assign an attribute to a
> paragraph, so that the ATTR_HTML: class="XXX" syntax would export as <p
> class="XXX">, but that is a different issue.

It would be ATTR_HTML: :class "XXX". I try to unify syntax for
attributes with syntax for Babel and AFAICT, `html' is the last back-end
to have key="value" syntax.

>> For the time being, Org syntax
>> doesn't allow to specify attributes per link object.
>
> I think what you are saying is that the current intended behavior is for
> whatever is specified by ATTR_HTML to apply to every image or link in
> the paragraph.

No. I am saying that ATTR_HTML behaviour in _undefined_ when a paragraph
contains more than one link, as it has always been.

If you carefully look at Org manual (in application with previous
exporter framework), in "Images in HTML export", you will notice that
HTML attributes only apply to a single link pointing to an image, not to
a paragraph containing many links.

>> As a consequence, attributes will be assigned to every link within the
>> paragraph.
>
> Is this behavior helpful to anyone in any practical circumstances?

I never said it was. It's not even a feature. I'm just explaining what
is happening.

> Moreover, this means that, not only does the new exporter fail where the
> old one succeeded,

I worked hard to make the new export framework compatible with defined
behaviour of previous exporter, not with handy undocumented side-effects
it may have.

> It seems to me that, whether the user is happy with the output or not,
> the HTML exporter ought to produce valid HTML.

I agree. But, in this case, you're using undefined Org syntax (which,
admittedly, used to "work" for you).

If there's a simple patch that mimics this for html back-end, I don't
mind applying it. But it still won't make up for a real solution.

Unless, that is, it is decided that this behaviour is an official
feature supported by Org, in which case, it should be added to the
manual.

> A more general workaround that would help everyone affected would be to
> temporarily modify ox-html.el so that attributes from ATTR_HTML only
> apply to the *first* item in the paragraph.  This would have the
> advantage of mimicking the behavior of the old exporter (thus not
> breaking existing content) and of keeping images for other export
> formats.  Of course, anyone relying on the ATTR_HTML to set attributes
> for every image and/or link in a paragraph would have to adopt a
> different workaround, but ... does anyone really do this?

It would solve your problem. But what if someone starts a paragraph with
a regular link and thereafter, add an image? ATTR_HTML attributes would
never reach it.

Again, there's no proper solution besides modifying link syntax.


Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Goaziou