RE: Any word ...

Dave Raggett wrote:

> Yes, the next release will support the single namespace now agreed
> for XHTML 1.0 and the corresponding doctype identifiers.

Any rough idea of when this will be posted?  (I rewrote a NoteTab Pro "library"
to take advantage of the Tidy configuration file, and if the new version of Tidy
will be ready within a week or so, I will wait to send it to the author so I can
incorporate new functionality -- if any -- into that library).

> > A suggestion for the configuration file ... an option to force
> > the desired output DOCTYPE declaration. Something like
> >
> > 	doctype: 	omit | guess | strict | loose | <!DOCTYPE ...
> >
> > where the default behavior is "guess" (current behavior).  The
> > output format (HTML or XHTML -- implied or specified elsewhere)
> > determines whether the "strict" or "loose" applied to HTML 4.0
> > or XHTML 1.0.  The final choice above would be for a custom
> > DOCTYPE not covered by the other ones (such as HTML 2.0 and
> > 3.2).
>
> I assume you want this to control stripping out of presentational
> features, no? Let me know what your goals are here.

The goal is just to be able to specify, announce, or declare the desired
DOCTYPE, for example for validation purposes.  Right now, Tidy might "guess"
that a document is HTML 2.0.  That's fine, but what if you *want* to specify it
as HTML 4.0 Strict if it would validate equally as such?  (One fellow that
worked with me said that Tidy did everything perfectly for him, except that he
too often had to go change just the DOCTYPE from 2.0 and 3.2 to HTML 4.0
Strict -- he said he didn't want to be known for publishing archaic documents
... :)

Though a document might be plain jane -- no font tags, not even any CSS --
doesn't necessarily mean you want to declare it as HTML 2.0.

As to stripping out presentation features, that's really a separate (though
related) issue.  Tidy already does a pretty good job with that using the -clean
option.  There's a few things it doesn't do yet, like presentational attributes
to TD and BODY, but I'm confident that will come at some point.

> > $0.25 ...
>
> But costing rather more than that to deal with, I think :-)

:)  Yes, and frankly I don't quite see how you manage editing specs and Recs
while developing software that happens to be one of the most useful in
existence! ...

/Jelks

Received on Monday, 17 May 1999 16:03:09 UTC