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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
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"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
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<meta name="generator" content="HTML Tidy, see www.w3.org" />
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<title>HTML TIDY - Notes on pending work</title>
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content="HTML, validation, error correction, pretty-printing" />
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<meta name="author" content="Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org>" />
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<style type="text/css">
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font-family: sans-serif
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h1 { margin-left: -8% }
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h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { margin-left: -4% }
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pre { color: green; font-weight: bold;
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font-size: 80%; font-family: monospace}
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em { font-style: italic; font-weight: bold }
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strong { text-transform: uppercase; font-weight: bold }
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.note {font-style: italic; color: rgb(192, 101, 101) }
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//hr {text-align: center; width: 60% }
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font-family: "Comic Sans MS", "Times New Roman", serif
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font-family: sans-serif;
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background: rgb(255,255,153)
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.people {font-family: "Lucida Calligraphy", serif}
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:link { color: rgb(0, 0, 153) }
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:visited { color: rgb(153, 0, 153) }
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:active { color: rgb(255, 0, 102) }
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a :hover { color: rgb(0, 0, 255) }
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<style type="text/css">
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p.c1 {font-style: italic}
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<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" background="grid.gif" text="black"
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link="navy" vlink="black" alink="red">
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<h1>HTML TIDY - Notes on Pending Work</h1>
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<p><a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett">Dave Raggett</a> <a
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href="mailto:dsr@w3.org">dsr@w3.org</a></p>
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<p>This is a page where I am keeping the suggestions for
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improvements or bug fixes. My current work load means that I
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don't get much time to work on HTML Tidy, so I am interested in
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<h4>Public Email List for Tidy: <<a
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href="mailto:html-tidy@w3.org">html-tidy@w3.org</a>></h4>
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<p>I have set up an archived mailing list devoted to Tidy. To
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subscribe send an email to html-tidy-request@w3.org with the word
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subscribe in the subject line (include the word unsubscribe if
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you want to unsubscribe). The <a
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href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/html-tidy/">archive</a>
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for this list is accessible online. Please use this list to
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report errors or enhancement requests.</p>
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<h2>Things awaiting further attention</h2>
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<li>Support for BIG5 and ShiftJIS (Rick Jelliffe)</li>
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<li>Stronger checking on which attributes appear on what
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<li>Sorting attributes in a canonical order</li>
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<li>Version checking for HTML 4.01 vs 4.0 (Tidy currently will
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set the document type to 4.01 in preference to 4.0)</li>
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<li>Noticing that the document isn't really XHTML if it isn't
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wellformed, i.e. it lacks end tags and quotes on attribute
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<li>Converting <font face="Symbol">a</font> etc. to
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the corresponding Unicode characters, when cleaning HTML.</li>
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<li>link checking - this would involve some platform dependent
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code as the network interface varies significantly from one
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platform to the next.</li>
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<li>When exporting Word2000 to Web page, there is a need for
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smarter rules of thumb for working out whether the paragraph is a
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bulletted or numbered list item, and determining the level of
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nesting. Perhaps the style attribute holds the key? This tends to
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include substrings like: "mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;" and
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"mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1;". Unfortunately, these aren't always
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present, and I have yet to figure out a foolproof heuristic.</li>
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<p>I need to set up an index of precisely what attributes are
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supported on each element. Right now, some elements check their
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own attributes, whilst others are checked via default checks
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defined for each attribute independently of the element. Until
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this is done, you sometimes find that validation services
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discovering errors unnoticed by Tidy itself.</p>
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<p>Jelks Cabaniss asks: <i>Could Tidy be made to automatically
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"clean" (FONTs to CSS) if the Strict DOCTYPE is requested? An
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HTML or XHTML Strict document can't have FONT tags according to
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the DTDs</i>. Jelks has a bunch of other good ideas such as
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converting the bgcolor attribute over to CSS.</p>
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<p>Adding an option to select slide transition effects. I would
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also like to provide an optional feature for sorting attribute
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<p>I am having problems with form elements as direct children of
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tr or table. It is dangerous to create an implicit table cell,
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and what is needed is a way to move the form element into the
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next cell. If this can't be done an error needs to be raised
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since Tidy will be stuck. On a separate note, Tidy is still
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breaking lines between <img> and </a> which in
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Netscape shows as an underlined space. It's fine in IE.</p>
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<p>Benjamin Holzman <bah@orientation.com> writes: I'm
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wrapping tidy (release-date 2000.01.13) in some perl objects
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(using SWIG), and CharEncoding being a global is a bit of a pain.
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I was wondering what your thoughts would be on how to fix that.
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The character encoding is already a property of struct Out; is
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there any reason why making it part of struct StreamIn as well,
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and perhaps setting that property in OpenInput, based on the
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existing CharEncoding variable, wouldn't allow us to move
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CharEncoding to be local to main?</p>
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<p>Oh, in case you're curious about the API, here's a short
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script using my wrappers to be an html to xhtml filter:</p>
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my $tidy = Tidy->new(*STDIN);
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my $document = $tidy->parse;
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$tidy->as_xhtml(*STDOUT);
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<p>Rick Parsons would like there to be a new wrap-attributes
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option that can be used to suppress line wrapping within
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attributes. There is already a similar option for JavaScript
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<p>Vijay Patil would like tidy -h to display options sorted
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<p>Julian Reschke would like there to be an option to add the
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xml:space="preserve" attribute to pre elements when outputting
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<p>Armando Asantos would like to use Tidy to produce a list of
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URLs for images or hypertext links according to a config option.
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This would be straightforward, but is a lower priority than bug
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<p>Omri Traub would like an option to wrap the contents of style
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and script elements in CDATA marked sections when converting to
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XHTML. He is also interested in direct support for 16 bit
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character file I/O.</p>
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<p>Bertilo Wennergren notes:</p>
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<blockquote>If I configure Tidy to "upgrade to style sheets", it
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does so for a few things in my main document, but the code thus
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created get error reports if I feed it back to Tidy. It turns out
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that Tidy creates extra "class" attributes on tags that already
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have "class" attributes set. This happens with this page:
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<http://www.concinnity.se/bertilow/index.htm>.</blockquote>
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<p>Randi Waki notes:</p>
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<p>If a quoted URL attribute value (e.g., href in <a>
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elements) contains a line break, 13-Jan-2000 Tidy changes the
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line break to a space while IE and Netscape discard the line
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break. This can result in a broken link in the tidied
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<p>I believe the following change fixes the problem. In lexer.c,
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insert the following lines before line 2502:</p>
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/* discard line breaks in quoted URLs */
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if (c == '\n' && IsUrl(name))
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/* existing line 2502 */ c = ' ';
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<p>Stephen Reynolds would like Tidy to keep track of whether a
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comment started on a new line and preserve this in the
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<p>Terry Teague says:</p>
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<p>Sorry, I should have been more clear. Part of the problem is
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the current HelpText() function in localize.c doesn't actually
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reflect current reality.</p>
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<p>You need to at least add the following line to HelpText()
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tidy_out(out, " -version or -v show version\n");
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<p>And I suppose it should mention the use of the new
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"--<config options>" type syntax.</p>
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<p>Regards, Terry</p>
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<p>John Russel notes:</p>
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1] does the specification indicate these are WRONG
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2] if so why do they pass thru tidy ....
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is url syntax such a can of worms that it is left to user
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CASE 1: misuse of slash for folders
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site had background="pics\fancy.jpg"
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instead of "pics/fancy.jpg"
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CASE 2: spaces in filename
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site had href="coin album.html"
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instead of "coin%20album.html"
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<p>Andre Stechert would like a way to prevent Tidy from
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"cleaning" newly declared elements which don't have any content
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but do have end tags, see his mail of 17th January 2000</p>
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<p>Todd Clark would like to use Tidy with Microsoft's WebClass
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tags. Unfortunately these include unusual characters in the tag
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names such as @ which Tidy objects to, for instance:</p>
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<WC@DOMAINNAME>test.com</WC@DOMAINNAME>
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<p>Perhaps it makes sense to offer an option to make Tidy less
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picky about what characters it accepts in tag names. Or perhaps
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<p>Jelks Cabaniss suggests an option to control dropping of empty
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elements, e.g. according to what attributes they have.</p>
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<p>Paavo Hartikainen writes:</p>
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<p>Tidy always expands '&' to '&' even if I have
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'quote-ampersand: no' defined in configuration file. This is not
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a good thing to do for URLs that have '&' characters in them.
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OS is Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 SPARC. Same thing happens on Alpha.
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Other architectures I have not tried.</p>
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<p>My configuration looks like this:</p>
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char-encoding: latin1
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logical-emphasis: yes
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<p>Paul White reports that Tidy isn't recognizing HTML 3.2 when
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the doctype is "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN" (as per the REC),
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and similarly for HTML 4.01. This would appear to call for a
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change to the table of names in lexer.c.</p>
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<p>Stuart Hungerford would like Tidy to detect and fix duplicate
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attributes e.g. multiple class attributes. Celeste Suliin Burris
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would like Tidy to replace spaces in URLs by %20 as some versions
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of Netscape "croak big time" on this. Denis Kokarev also wants
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Tidy to remove duplicate attributes when the values are the same.
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This apparently stops XSLT from working. Brian Schweitzer notes
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that Tidy adds a 2nd class attribute rather than merging the
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classes into a space separated list.</p>
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<p>Bertilo Wennergren writes: Tidy seems not to recognize frame
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elements with a closing "/". It actually removes them. Try his <a
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href="http://www.concinnity.se/bertilow/pmeg/pmeg9/k_bazo.htm">example</a>.
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Tidy can produce XHTML Frameset docs, but when fed them back</p>
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<p>again it cries foul.</p>
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<p>Jose Manuel Cerqueira Esteves notes:</p>
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I've used `tidy' to convert a few HTML 4.0 files to XHTML 1.0 and noticed
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a problem when dealing with constructs like
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<small><small>some text</small></small>
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First, `tidy' acts as if the second "<small>" was meant as a closing tag:
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Warning: "<small> is probably intended as </small>"
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Then it trims the resulting empty <small></small>:
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Warning: trimming empty <small>
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And finally both remaining closing tags ("</small>"), now spurious,
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Warning: discarding unexpected </small>
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Warning: discarding unexpected </small>
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It would be convenient to have at least some `tidy' option to prevent this
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from happening (or perhaps some different heuristics?).
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<p>Robbert Hans Baron would like to see Tidy warning about
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duplicate attributes and fixing these when the values are
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<p>Jutta Wrage notes that: When parsing HTML 3.2 Pages, tidy
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doesn't accept textareas in forms correctly. The HTML Reference
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specification (HTML 3.2 Final) allows: name, rows and cols, but
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upon seeing these Tidy thinks the document is 4.0.</p>
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<p>Matthew Brealey notes that a heading start tag is coerced to
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an end heading tag when the end tag is missing. This is
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deliberate, but perhaps not the best heuristic.</p>
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<p>HIYAMA Masayuki notes that Tidy should set the encoding
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attribute to match the language encoding, e.g. ?xml version="1.0"
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encoding="iso-2022-jp"?><.</p>
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<p>Mark Modrall has extended Tidy to support selectively
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stripping out listed tags and attributes, see his email of March
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<p>Yong Taek Bae notes that with the omit end tags option Tidy
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omits the body tag even if it has attributes. This is an
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<p>Tapio Markula reports that Tidy is incorrectly replacing
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accented characters in script elements by entities. The script
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element (in HTML but not XHTML) is CDATA and as such entities
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won't be expanded. This bug needs to be fixed along with the
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support for CDATA sections.</p>
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<p>Terrill Bennett reports tidy crashing when producing slides,
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and when the -i option has been set. He later added the crash
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occurs when the page doesn't include an h1 element. See
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Terrill-Bennett-11mar00.txt.</p>
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<p>Stephen Lewis notes that if an <hr> element is present
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in the head before the title element, then Tidy gets confused and
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adds in a spurious extra empty title element. This would be
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avoided if Tidy could move the hr into the body before the body
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element is encountered. This raises a number of problems for
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instance working out when to copy in attributes from an explicit
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<p>Carl Osterly would like Tidy to avoid breaking lines before or
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after the = sign in attribute values when this is practical.
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Perhaps a simple rule of thumb could be used to decide this?</p>
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<p>Rick H Wesson notes that Tidy crashes on CDATA marked sections
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when parsing XML.</p>
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<p>Luigi Federici would like an option to set the DTD URI for XML
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<p>Mat Sander notes: If I have php code the indentation behaves
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strange. Repeated tidying php content and end tag indented one
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level extra for each time. The result ends up something like
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I have the fillowing config file for Tidy:
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char-encoding: latin1
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assume-xml-procins: yes
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logical-emphasis: yes
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drop-empty-paras: yes
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fix-bad-comments: yes
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<p>Don Hasson notes that if you make a mistake and leave off the
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ending "/" in the <title> tag, tidy will generate an extra
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set of <title>s.</p>
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<head><title>No end here<title></head>
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<p>produces this:</p>
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<title>No end here</title>
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<title></title>
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<p>Jeff Wilkinson would like the HTML Tidy page to include
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internal anchors so that he can link directly to the appropriate
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<p>Peter Vince would like to be able to clean presentation
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attributes on the body element, as well as translating b and i to
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<p>Dave Bryan and Mathew Brealey would like there to be a way to
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suppress the default handling of inline elements in favor of
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simply inserting the appropriate end tag when encountering an
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element that isn't allowed in an inline context. The default
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behavior replicates the rendering on existing browsers but can
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cause problems for hand editors.</p>
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<p>Dave Bryan notes that tidy isn't updating the column position
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when parsing attributes.</p>
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<p>Can Tidy track when a line break occurs after a PI or comment
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and reproduce this in the output? This idea occurred to me after
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reading a comment from Brad Stowers.</p>
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<p>One interesting suggestion is to make some of Tidy's rules of
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thumb sensitive to the program that generated the markup as
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indicated by the meta element. This would allow for greater
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robustness in how the rules operate.</p>
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<p>Dave Bryan would like the quiet mode to be tweaked to suppress
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the general info at the end of the report. see
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Dave-Bryan-24mar00.txt.</p>
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<p>Erik Rossen would like an option to suppress line wrap within
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tags, so that the tag is always on the same line regardless of
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the number and length of the attributes.</p>
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<p>Dan Satria suggest that the clean mechanism check to see if
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there are any existing matching style rules before adding new
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<p>Zoltan Hawryluk suggests mapping the Netscape layer tag into
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the equivalent CSS positioning syntax.</p>
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<p>Jim Walker says Tidy doesn't correctly report errors such as
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<tt></</head></tt>.</p>
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<p>Tidy's slide feature: see Johannes-Poutre-12jul00.txt</p>
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<p>Carole Mah suggests Tidy should recover from multiple class
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attributes on the same element.</p>
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<li>Recursion through subdirectories, so you can fix up your
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entire web site at one go. This assumes I can find a way that is
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portable across a wide range of platforms!</li>
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<li>Support for W3C's <a
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href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-DOM-Level-1/">Document Object
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Model</a> (DOM) level one.</li>
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<li>Full validation of all attribute values.</li>
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<li>Mapping Unicode bidi control characters to HTML tags.</li>
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<li>Full support for parsing XML (still somewhat limited).</li>
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<li>How to say which XML elements should be printed
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<li>Acting on the XML encoding attribute, e.g.
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<?xml encoding="iso-8859-1"></li>
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<li>Improved mapping from HTML presentation attributes/elements
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<li>Improved support for <a
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href="http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/">JSP</a> (Java Server
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<li>Ugly print option which removes all optional whitespace</li>
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htmldoc/pending.html
