I have written a very small Rails plugin which makes it spit HTML back
at you instead of XHTML. Find details here:
http://dev.turnipspatch.com/trac/wiki/HTMLOutput
Hope it’s useful to someone!
Jon
Just curious… Why would one need html instead of xhtml?
Hmm, also, looking at the page you provided, I don’t see what these
three methods have to
do with html vs. xhtml. No, wait… I see that the “tag” method allows
one to suppress the
closing “/”. Is the ever a situation any more where it’s necessary to
suppress the closing
slash?
b
Ben M. wrote:
Just curious… Why would one need html instead of xhtml?
If I can be forgiven for linking to myself, see here:
http://turnipspatch.com/xhtml-vs-html/
Hmm, also, looking at the page you provided, I don’t see what these
three methods have to
do with html vs. xhtml. No, wait… I see that the “tag” method allows
one to suppress the
closing “/”. Is the ever a situation any more where it’s necessary to
suppress the closing
slash?
That’s to do with the difference between XHTML syntax and HTML syntax.
Because XHTML is supposed to be well-formed (as it is supposedly a
dialect of XML), stand-alone tags must be self closing, like this:
However, in HTML that is invalid, and it must be like so:
Hence the plugin.
Ben M. wrote:
Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say… sigh. And all I have to say is
“don’t drink the
hixie koolaid!”
Am I saying “You must use this plugin or you are an idiot!” ? Or
“Everyone must agree with me!” Perhaps if you took a moment to read my
post you could at least credit me with a mind of my own and not try to
imply I’m just following the views of Ian Hixie.
Whatever. I want to output HTML. Others may too, so I have released the
plugin. I’m not trying to force anyone to use it. So what’s your
problem?
Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say… sigh. And all I have to say is
“don’t drink the
hixie koolaid!”
:-&
b
Ben M. wrote:
So, there’s my opinion, for better or worse… feel free to ignore.
Thanks, I shall. I could make replies to any or all of your points, but
that’s not what this thread is for. This thread is about a plugin I
made, not whether one should use the plugin or not. So please refrain
from voicing your opinions in that regard.
Ironically, I started that reply several times and actually decided not
to reply at all
for a while. Then I decided that it’s fair for me to express my opinion
on the mime-type
hype. I figured I’d do it without going into a lot of argumentative
explanations; I was
hoping to be relatively non-confrontational. I can see that I failed in
that endeavor.
For the record, I think it’s great that you made a plug-in and are
sharing it with people.
I don’t think you are insisting that anyone do anything. Bravo.
I do, however, find it extremely sad and perplexing that six years after
the w3c laid the
mistake that was html to rest we are still having this discussion… and
if certain
bloggers you link to are to be believed, the side of progress and
standards is losing! And
the smack-in-the-face icing-on-the-cake is that this is all because of
Microsoft’s rampant
disregard for standards and shoddy programming practices. (50 billion
dollars in the bank
and they can’t spend a little bit of money to fix their POS browser!)
So, in a nutshell, that is my problem. I keep telling myself that I
should just ignore
all the bickering and do my work as I see fit, but it’s hard to ignore
this… in much the
same manner that its hard to ignore someone arguing for the genetic
superiority of one
race or for the equal treatment of creationism as a scientific theory.
That’s why I said “don’t drink the koolaid”. Hixie’s arguments appear
perfectly
well-founded in their face. However, a) who cares if explorer parses a
file as tag soup?
I’m making my documents well-formed, valid, and standards compliant
because it’s the
right thing to do… I do it for myself and for browsers that can
handle it. b) Giving in
to this and creating more and more and more content on the web that will
not conform to
the few simple, basic rules required for a valid xml document is just
plain insanity.
Really, there’s just a few stunningly simple rules to make your web
documents
xml-compatible and therefore open up the whole world of xml processing.
I cannot fathom
what is so #*(@$#)! hard about this.
The only thing I can figure is that someone or something really pissed
Hixie off and he’s
determined to fuck over the web standards movement. He’s found a little
crack in the wall
and he’s just gonna keep scrabbling away at it.
In any case, I have no problem with you or your plugin. Actually, it’s a
really good idea
because you can just remove the arg that suppresses the closing slash
and switch back to
valid tags. It would probably be even better if you could make that
switch in one place.
So, there’s my opinion, for better or worse… feel free to ignore.
b
Alain R. wrote:
> So please refrain from voicing your opinions in that regard.This forum is for learning new stuff, improving ourselves and exchanging
ideas.
Please refrain from trying to refrain people from writing polite and
intesting contents about interesting subjects.
Ben was not ranting, and his prose was richer in info than 80-90% of
this forum typical traffic.
He could have started a new thread though.
Okay, maybe I was slightly angered by his comment about hixie koolaid,
and that perhaps coloured my replies. Sorry. I have no objection to the
discussion of HTML vs XHTML, but I do – strongly – feel it’s
inappropriate for a Ruby on Rails forum. It’s just wildly off topic.
> .. I could make replies to any or all of your points,I’m genuinely interested in hearing them.
I don’t really want to reply to Ben’s comments because I am sure that’ll
just end up in endless debate. XHTML vs HTML is a very hot topic. I
don’t want to go over it again really – I made a blog post voicing my
opinions on the situation a while back (linked already in this thread
but its at http://turnipspatch.com/xhtml-vs-html/), so if you wish to
hear my opinions you are more than welcome to read it. I also recommend
reading any or all of the other articles linked from my post. I also
recommend reading the copious comments (which alone are an indication of
how controversial the topic is).
Jon
> I also recommend reading any or all of the other articles linked
from my post. I also
> recommend reading the copious comments (which alone are an
indication of
> how controversial the topic is).
I’ve just done that, and I learned quite a few interesting things on the
way.
Thanks for the info… and it makes exactly my point: I would have
missed it, if the thread had only been about your plugin, and not its
context.
Alain
Jon
> So please refrain from voicing your opinions in that regard.
This forum is for learning new stuff, improving ourselves and exchanging
ideas.
Please refrain from trying to refrain people from writing polite and
intesting contents about interesting subjects.
Ben was not ranting, and his prose was richer in info than 80-90% of
this forum typical traffic.
He could have started a new thread though.
> .. I could make replies to any or all of your points,
I’m genuinely interested in hearing them.
> that's not what this thread is for.
This forum is for learning, improving ourselves and exchanging ideas.
Alain
One last comment: peace.
I agree that the XHTML vs. HTML debate has become nothing short of a
holy war. And I
confess that I’m prone to button pushing. Must have something to do with
have a bullying
big brother.
As I said previously, bravo for making the plugin. I hope to someday
contribute something
to the rails community (other than my big mouth).
b
PS: Alain, thanks for getting my back.