Re: A Proposal for Alignment with HTACG

On 02/02/2015 11:48 PM, Jim Derry wrote:
*snip*
>
> In many corners of the Internet there are claims that "Tidy is dead," or
> "Tidy
> is outdated," or "Tidy isn't maintained." These are fair assessments and
> HTACG
> hopes to change both the facts and the perception.

I have expressed those concerns on Tumblr.

It has been rather frustrating to me, I use tidy to clean up user input 
before import into a php libxml2/DOMDocument xml DOM node and the 
stagnant state of libtidy that ships in RHEL is really frustrating.

I have to manually go through the imported node checking every attribute 
etc. for things that tidy should catch but doesn't because of the 
stagnant state.

I am really glad to see signs that something is being done about this.


>
> Tidy's past reputation is the best reason not to fork. HTACG intends to see
> _Tidy_ thrive, not some offshoot that lacks its history. As distasteful
> as the
> word "branding" is to many of us, Tidy is a brand, and it's a brand that
> shouldn't be tarnished by withering away and dying.

Tidy should not be forked if at all possible because of libtidy. A lot 
of third party tools (like php) have bindings to libtidy and a fork 
could be problematic in that respect and in my opinion, avoided if at 
all possible.


>
>   - Tidy itself is a brand. It has significant name recognition and is
> regarded
>     as the defacto HTML cleaning tool by a significant userbase even today.

Yes, even in its stale state, it is the best there is, at least that 
exists in the FLOSS world.


> in the interest of community development, combined with responsible
> maintainers,
> we adopt Github as the official working repository.

I am 100% behind this. git is amazing and github has been a phenomenal 
resource. With CVS / SVN I always ended up setting up my own server 
which was a pita to maintain but since I started using github I haven't 
ever felt a need to run a git server myself, it just works and works 
everywhere and works well.

>
> If desired we should consider maintaining a mirror of the respository on
> SourceForge. Although this subjects us to additional administrative burden,
> HTML Tidy has a long history on SourceForge and for many users it is
> still the
> go-to destination for anything Tidy-related.

sourceforge isn't what they once were, I don't see the point.

>
> A mirror also affords an opportunity for the original maintainers to
> separate
> from HTACG if they should determine that they are not satisfied with the
> progress that HTACG is promising.

original maintainers can fork github at any point they want from any 
revision they want, I don't think maintaining a sourceforge mirror for 
that purpose makes sense.

I'm not opposed to sourceforge, I just don't see the point.

>
> My proposal includes using Github hosting for these websites. Just as for
> software projects, this provides the ability for HTACG members and the
> general
> public to issue pull requests and post issues.
>

Does W3C have hosting that can be used?

>
> #### Mailing Lists
>
> Github does not offer mailing list support. This still leaves us with three
> main mailing systems to support ([W3 HTACG][1], [SourceForge][2], and
> [W3 Tidy][3]), which will be burdensome to monitor and support.
>
> I will make the suggestion that we move to the set of HTACG mailing lists.
>
>   - As my suggestion is to move towards Github and adding distance from
>     SourceForge, it is natural not to favor SourceForge's mailing list.
>   - The orginal W3 mailing list has a long history, however in that some
> members
>     have expressed disappointment in W3C's previous behaviors, perhaps it is
>     good to distance ourselves.
>   - The HTACG list is _also_ hosted at W3C, however we have more control
> over it,
>     and it provides relevancy to HTACG as an organization.
> Clearly we as members must be prepared to monitor all of the existing
> mailing
> lists during a transition period.

HTACG mailing list would I think be the best one, I'm not on it (yet) 
but if tidy is getting a fresh injection of activity, I think that would 
be good. In my opinion.

For whatever my opinion is worth.

-- 
-=-
Sent my from my laptop, may not be able to respond timely

Received on Tuesday, 3 February 2015 08:43:30 UTC