Re: [PATCH] export to various flavors of (X)HTML

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Eric,
>
> thanks for the reply.  OK, I am going with the patch for now, let's
> push more thinking about HTML5 further down the line.
>
> Thanks for working this out!

My pleasure, I hope I haven't stifled debate...

> On 6.5.2013, at 09:36, Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> wrote:
>
>> Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com> writes:
>> 
>>> Hi Eric, Rick, Francois and others,
>>> 
>>> Nicolas commented to me about this patch that he was wondering if it
>>> would not be better to have a separate backend for html5, i.e.
>>> ox-html5.el that could be derived from ox-html.el and make it easier
>>> in the future to build it out to take full advantage of html5 features.
>>> I think he has a point, and I would like to hear your comments.
>> 
>> My initial reaction is: yes, eventually, but perhaps not now. A few
>> reasons:
>> 
>> 1. This patch is already done, and it works, modulo bugfixes (not a
>> great reason, I know).
>> 
>> 2. The patch ended up with two predicate functions (org-html-xhtml-p and
>> org-html-html5-p) because we really are dealing with four distinct
>> states: X or not, and 5 or not. Splitting off ox-html5 only isolates one
>> of those predicates: the "X or not" question would still have to be
>> asked and answered in both ox-html and ox-html5. You could just as well
>> split it the other way (ox-xhtml and ox-html), and have the X variants
>> actually build a DOM tree and write xml (I'm not actually advocating
>> that, but I just read this[1]).
>> 
>> 3. The change to org-html-special-block takes care of the large majority
>> of new html5 features. The change to inline-images is fairly small.
>> Otherwise, there are many new inline elements that could be used, but in
>> many cases browser support for these is limited or nonexistent, and even
>> basic syntax is up in the air. They can wait (or be handled with custom
>> link types).
>> 
>> More importantly, the html5 version of, for example, the formatting of
>> timestamps would look very like the (x)html(4) version, except that the
>> final tag would be a bit different (<time> instead of <span>, with
>> different attributes). Most of the surrounding logic would be the same.
>> So ox-html5 would only override a few of ox-html's formatting functions,
>> and even those few would largely be copy-n-paste from ox-html. I'm not
>> sure that's worth it. (Unless derived backends could call back to their
>> parent backends' implementations, a la OO inheritance? But that way lies
>> madness.)
>> 
>> To be clear, I think *something* more drastic should be done. But my
>> feeling is: go with this patch for now. Then stop there. The next time
>> someone feels the need to expand org's html5 capabilities, think about
>> new backends.
>> 
>> I'm happy to continue with the discussion, and the coding. I think part
>> of the problem is HTML itself: as Rick's polyglot concerns show, the
>> formats can be multiple things at once. Another part of the problem is
>> that org has a certain take on HTML that I guess comes out of the early
>> days of Unix documentation, when it really was the HyperText Markup
>> Language: linked sets of static pages, with up/prev/next links, and
>> headers and footers on each page. `org-html-divs' is a good example of
>> this, and a perfect example of where html5 would handle things
>> differently. I would argue that that should no longer be the default
>> point of view on HTML. If we're going to rethink things, let's rethink
>> this too.
>> 
>> Eric
>> 
>> [1] http://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2008/06/data-in-garbage-out.html
>> 
>> 
>>> On 2.5.2013, at 23:07, Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Rick Frankel <rick@rickster.com> writes:
>>>> 
>>>>> On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 08:26:52PM -0700, Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
>>>>>> Rick Frankel <rick@rickster.com> writes:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Whoops. Wrong key. Patch actually attached to this email...
>>>>>>> rick
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Great, I'll consolidate all these -- would it be better to mush them
>>>>>> into one big patch, or to keep them separate (I suppose for ease of
>>>>>> rollback, if something goes wrong)?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Probably squashing them into one patch would be the best. But Carsten
>>>>> or Bastien might disagree :).
>>>>> 
>>>>> rick
>>>> 
>>>> Okay, there it is: one big patch (including your xml declaration fix).
>>>> 
>>>> I didn't add any more refined handling of the html5-fancy option. As a
>>>> second-order option it didn't seem worthy of an #+OPTIONS entry, and I
>>>> didn't bother checking for an empty string, either. It can always be
>>>> #+BINDed if necessary, and if it ever annoys anyone I can fix it
>>>> further.
>>>> 
>>>> E
>>>> 
>>>> <0001-ox-html.el-Export-to-different-X-HTML-flavors-includ.patch>
>> 
>>