Re: Possible bug

At 12:41 PM +0400 9/18/01, TheCroll [mail.ru] wrote:
>I have downloaded tidy.win32.v1.9beta.exe from tidy.sourceforge.net
>and launched it with -h | more. In the processing directives list it
>is said that -asxml and -asxhtml are both for to convert HTML to
>well-formed XHTML. Is it correct (I mean for -asxml)?

It is a little confusing - I asked myself similar questions when I was
modifying the source code, and meant to raise the issue, but forgot (thanks
for bringing the issue up).

Basically the "-asxml" option has been there for a long time (at least a
few years), and while it may have originally been used to convert HTML to
well-formed XML, the code was changed a couple of years ago, so that the
"-asxml" option was used to create well-formed XHTML output (the code in
"tidy.c" sets xHTML = yes). The help msg in "localize.c" has always said :

"-asxml          to convert html to wellformed xml"

This issue was sort of raised before by Douglas Cook on 18 Aug 1999 :

>The last thing I wanted to mention was a minor bug in the command line
>parser for Tidy.  The option -asxml is supposed to make tidy output XML, but
>it is actually parsed into the "output XHTML" option instead.  Change line
>713 from "xHTML = yes;" to "XmlOut = yes;" to fix the problem.  The
>distinction is minor, but this keeps it consistent with the config file's
>options.

The above suggested fix was never made.

>As far as that goes, it may make sense to add a separate command line option
>for xHTML, adding
>
>            else if (strcmp(arg, "asxhtml") == 0)
>                xHTML = yes;
>
>right below line 713.  Of course since the distinction between the XML and
>XHTML outputs is minimal (Tidy outputs the original DOCTYPE in XML vs. a
>generated DOCTYPE in XHTML, and adds the xmlns attribute to the <html> tag
>in XHTML, and possibly a few other minor differences that I didn't notice),
>this may be a moot point.

The "-asxhtml" option was added later, I imagine as an alternative spelling
(it is more logical). The code in "tidy.c" also sets xHTML = yes.

What was missing was the help msg in "localize.c" for "-asxhtml", which I
added, and then changed the help msg in "localize.c" for "-asxml" to match
what the option actually did. This change was made recently, and that is
why you noticed the possibility of a bug.

At this time, the config file option "output-xml: yes" is inconsistent in
behaviour with respect to the command line option "-asxml".

I personally tend to side with the other people who say it is a bug, but I
would like to hear more authorative opinions (particularly Dave Raggett,
since I believe this is code he touched a long time ago), before changing
the behaviour/code. It is possible it is also a moot point as described by
Douglas Cook above.

Regards, Terry

Received on Thursday, 20 September 2001 04:44:59 UTC