# ClothRed 0.3.0 released **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [April 12, 2007, 5:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/clothred-0-3-0-released/91827 "2007-04-12T17:54:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Phillip\_G](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/7ab992/32.png) [@Phillip\_G](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Phillip_G)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2007, 5:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/clothred-0-3-0-released/91827/1 "2007-04-12T17:54:34Z")
Or: TTD is fun. = ClothRed HTML 2 Textile converter == What it is A library to convert HTML into Textile markup for use, for example, with RedCloth. == Requirements All you need is Ruby. == Get it Available as a gem on RubyForge: gem install ClothRed Or download from RubyForge: [http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group\_id=3427](http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=3427) Or get the source: svn checkout svn://viewvc.rubyforge.mmmultiworks.com/var/svn/clothred == New in this release: - Support for some HTML entities - Support for tables == Features This is alpha software, and only a few Textile rules have been implemented yet: - font markup and weight (**, , …)** **- text formatting (, , ,~~)~~ - Support for headings - Support for paragraphs and** **>** **- Support for Textile entities** **== Usage** **require ‘clothred’** **text = ClothRed.new(“Bold _HTML_!”) text.to\_textile** **== Get Help Feel free to contact me, or peruse the homepage.** **- [http://clothred.rubyforge.org/](http://clothred.rubyforge.org/) - [http://rubyforge.org/projects/clothred/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/clothred/)** **– Phillip “CynicalRyan” Gawlowski [http://cynicalryan.110mb.com/](http://cynicalryan.110mb.com/) [http://clothred.rubyforge.org](http://clothred.rubyforge.org)** **Rule of Open-Source Programming #11:** **When a developer says he will work on something, he or she means “maybe”.** ---
**Author:** ![Phillip\_G](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/7ab992/32.png) [@Phillip\_G](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Phillip_G)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2007, 3:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/clothred-0-3-0-released/91827/2 "2007-04-13T15:42:35Z")
I think you will be bitten pretty fast with the current approach of doing only text substitutions while translating HTML into Textile. For example, HTML is pretty insensitive to some spaces in between: ```

main title

subtitle

``` is just as good as ```

main title

subtitle

``` But in Textile, ``` h1. main title h2. subtitle ``` is not the same as ``` h1. main title h2. subtitle ``` or even ``` h1. main title h2. subtitle ``` In the current implementation, ClothRed behaves like that: $ irb irb(main):001:0\> require ‘rubygems’ =\> true irb(main):002:0\> require ‘clothred’ =\> true irb(main):003:0\> t = ClothRed.new(“ # Foo ## Bar ”) =\> “ # Foo # ## Bar ” irb(main):004:0\> t.to\_textile =\> “h1. Foo h2. Bar” but that’s pretty easy to work around with the simple patch attached. I just replaced “” as a substitution to HTML , , … by “\n\n” producing the necessary paragraph breaks for Textile. “test/test\_headings.rb” had to be fixed and I also wrote “test/test\_misc.rb” as a test script for HTML with more than one tag in it. The substitution approach will not work quite right for HTML where closing tags are missing. The algorithm will never understand when the tags were closed. So this is somewhat limited currently to XHTML which demands closing tags. I think the suggestion of using a HTML parser (like Hpricot) to do this conversion will impose itself pretty soon. Thanks for the inspiring work. Adriano F… ---
**Author:** ![Phillip\_G](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/7ab992/32.png) [@Phillip\_G](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Phillip_G)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2007, 9:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/clothred-0-3-0-released/91827/3 "2007-04-13T21:06:10Z")
On Sat, Apr 14, 2007 at 01:24:02AM +0900, Phillip G. wrote: > > I think the suggestion of using a HTML parser (like Hpricot) to do > > this conversion will impose itself pretty soon. > > Probably, but I’ll have to play with Hpricot first, to see if it can do > what is needed (after a short skim, it allows to convert HTML4 into > XHTML1.0, which will make it easier). Trouble is, I want ClothRed as > dependency free as I can. I think what you’re going to find is, parsing tag-soup HTML is harder than you think - especially if your goal with ClothRed is to parse _arbitrary_ tag-soup HTML from arbitrary sources. ---
**Author:** ![Phillip\_G](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/7ab992/32.png) [@Phillip\_G](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Phillip_G)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2007, 6:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/clothred-0-3-0-released/91827/4 "2007-04-13T18:24:54Z")
Adriano F. wrote: > but that’s pretty easy to work around with the simple patch attached. > I just replaced “” as a substitution to HTML , , … by > “\n\n” producing the necessary paragraph breaks for Textile. > “test/test\_headings.rb” had to be fixed and I also wrote > “test/test\_misc.rb” as a test script for HTML with more than one tag > in it. Thanks. I’ll add your patch ASAP, and make a new release. > The substitution approach will not work quite right for HTML where > closing tags are missing. The algorithm will never understand when the > tags were closed. So this is somewhat limited currently to XHTML which > demands closing tags. And it’s buggy, I’ve noticed, as it ignores self-closing tags like . I’ll fix that together with your patch. > I think the suggestion of using a HTML parser (like Hpricot) to do > this conversion will impose itself pretty soon. Probably, but I’ll have to play with Hpricot first, to see if it can do what is needed (after a short skim, it allows to convert HTML4 into XHTML1.0, which will make it easier). Trouble is, I want ClothRed as dependency free as I can. So maybe I’ll redistribute Hpricot in non-gem distributions (if that’s possible, haven’t checked Hpricot’s license yet). > Thanks for the inspiring work. No problem. I’ll need that library for my own ideas. 😉 – Phillip “CynicalRyan” Gawlowski [http://cynicalryan.110mb.com/](http://cynicalryan.110mb.com/) [http://clothred.rubyforge.org](http://clothred.rubyforge.org) Rule of Open-Source Programming #48: The number of items on a project’s to-do list always grows or remains constant.