Re: [PNG] Jan 23rd meeting topics

Hello Chris,

One option might be using the Nu Html Checker[1]. It doesn't support 
tidying the document, but it can catch unintended mistakes like 
mismatched closing tags. You can also use spec-prod[2] to integrate it 
into your workflow.

hth,

Fuqiao

[1] https://github.com/validator/validator
[2] 
https://github.com/w3c/spec-prod/blob/main/docs/examples.md#run-as-a-validator-on-pull-requests

On 2023-01-19 14:22, Chris Blume (ProgramMax) wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> Our meeting on Jan 23rd will likely be short and sweet. The only topic
> to discuss which I am aware of is: Are we satisfied with HTML Tidy?
> 
> On one hand, it solves a real problem we've run into before. We once
> had mismatched closing tags, which HTML Tidy catches. I do want
> tooling to help us catch mistakes before they are merged in.
> 
> But on the other hand, HTML Tidy is not idempotent. As a result, it is
> the source of significant noise. When I made a change to one part of
> the document, HTML Tidy suddenly wanted a change in a totally
> unrelated part of the document. If I run it twice in a row, it wants
> different formatting after the formatting it just applied. HTML Tidy
> needlessly complicates pull requests. Worse, it conflates unrelated
> changes in one pull request.
> 
> We could contribute to HTML Tidy [1] to improve its shortcomings. We
> have already improved other tools (for example, ReSpec) in our journey
> on the PNG spec. This is a tempting option because we could get the
> perfect tool for us.
> 
> I took a glance at the HTML Tidy source code. I am not convinced the
> fixes we would want are simple enough that they will be done quickly.
> So even if we chose this route, we would still struggle against our
> tooling for a while.
> 
> I think a better option is to remove the HTML Tidy tooling for now. It
> simply isn't the magical tool we want yet.
> 
> I previously looked at Prettier [2], which is another HTML formatter
> used by other W3C projects. It is strongly opinionated (read: not
> customizable) and those hard-coded opinions don't align well to our
> needs.
> 
> I would like your thoughts on this.
> Should we continue using HTML Tidy to help us catch important
> mistakes?
> Should we perhaps also spend more time investigating why we are
> struggling with it? Perhaps we're using it wrong.
> Should we remove it? Replace it?
> 
> I'll see you all this coming Monday where we can share our thoughts.
> 
> Links:
> ------
> [1] https://github.com/htacg/tidy-html5
> [2] https://prettier.io/

Received on Friday, 20 January 2023 01:46:05 UTC