Re: [PATCH] HTML export - Do not add spaces to the data in <pre> sections

[Bernt Hansen <bernt@norang.ca>]

Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> writes:

> Hi Bernt,  I am not sure if I understand your patch correctly:

Hi Carsten!  Welcome back :)

> 
>
> On Aug 10, 2008, at 4:30 PM, Bernt Hansen wrote:
>
>     <pre> sections for HTML export should be clean.  We can use styles
>     to indent the text if that is desired.
>    
>     This allows copying and pasting the text from the HTML document
>     so that you get the original data in the
>     #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
>     ..
>     #+END_EXAMPLE
>     block.
>     ---
>    
>     I use <pre>..</pre> sections to save commands I use regularly in my
>     system documentation.  I copy and paste data directly from these
>     sections and noticed the extra 2 blanks preceeding the data.
>    
>     This change removes the blanks only for HTML export.  The latex and
>     Ascii exports are unchanged.
>    
>     lisp/org-exp.el |    2 +-
>     1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
>    
>     diff --git a/lisp/org-exp.el b/lisp/org-exp.el
>     index 32fa819..98fb4fe 100644
>     --- a/lisp/org-exp.el
>     +++ b/lisp/org-exp.el
>     @@ -2953,7 +2953,7 @@ lang=\"%s\" xml:lang=\"%s\">
>    
>      ;; Fixed-width, verbatim lines (examples)
>      (when (and org-export-with-fixed-width
>     -     (string-match "^[ \t]*:\\(.*\\)" line))
>     +     (string-match "^[ \t]*:  \\(.*\\)" line))
>
> Why are you matching exactly two spaces here?  Ah, I guess I am inserting
> these when processing the examples....
> Maybe it would be better to not insert the spaces, or insert them for ascii
> export only.  I will do that.  Thanks.

Basically I don't want blanks put into the <pre> section as part of the
data.

I originally took out the 2 spaces instead of inserting them but that
affected both latex and ASCII exports and didn't look 'better' IMO.  My
goal here is just to keep the HTML output identical to what is in the
#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE..#+END_EXAMPLE block.  If we want preceeding blanks on
the data we can just put it in the original source text.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

If I do this

,----
| #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
| $ somecommand
| data for the
| command goes here
| #+END_EXAMPLE
`----

the exported HTML output has 2 spaces in front of the data like this:

,----
| <pre class="example">
|   $ somecommand
|   data for the
|   command goes here
| </pre>
`----

The 2 preceeding blanks are put in during preprocessing of the example
section.

I don't want the preceeding 2 blanks.  They are mostly a formatting
issue and with CSS we can format the <pre> </pre> data anyway we want so
adding the blanks isn't really helpful.  It's easy to indent the
<pre>..</pre> section with CSS to get the same result as the embedded
blanks without resorting to adding preceeding blanks to the lines.

When cutting and pasting data from the resulting HTML I don't want the
extra blanks in the data since that's not really part of the original
data.  For some programs the data lines (following the $ somecommand)
needs to be verbatim and I have to cut and paste each line separately
instead of the entire block from the example.

The patch makes the output look like this instead:

,----
| <pre class="example">
| $ somecommand
| data for the
| command goes here
| </pre>
`----

and if you select it, copy it from the HTML page and paste it to a
buffer you get the original text.

Thanks!

-Bernt