Re: HTML5

[Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@usta.de>]

Hi Kristaps,

Kristaps Dzonsons wrote on Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 01:33:49AM +0200:

> Most everybody supports HTML5 these days.  Do we really need to
> knock around with XHTML and HTML-4.01?

Let me put it this way:  We should not use any fancy features.
If somebody has a browser that doesn't know about HTML versions
and just assumes everything is HTML 4 without looking at any
document types and stuff, then the pages should render cleanly.
Whether or not they validate as HTML 5 seems irrelevant to me.

Supporting multiple HTML variants seems pointless to me and just
complicates the code.

> Does anybody have a pressing need to use one or the other?

Wrong question, i'd say.  Let's use the smallest common denominator
and be done with it.  I certainly don't want any HTML 5 only features
or syntax getting used.  If that is impossible, than i'd rather
stick with HTML 4 than switch to HTML 5, HTML 4 is useable for all
real work and HTML 5 just looks like bloatware in general.  However
you patch looks like having a document that is both valid HTML 4
and valid HTML 5 seems easy, so there probably isn't an issue here.

I do like the cutting down on meta-tags in your patch.  Even if
we switch to HTML 5 and validate against that, we should continue
to validate against HTML 4.01 as well, i think, to make sure
no HTML 5 only stuff sneaks in.

> The enclosed ten-minute patch adds HTML5 support and makes it the
> default for both modes.

On first sight the patch looks harmless, it doesn't appear to
change anything structural.

> It also adds a default CSS style (if one isn't passed on the command
> line) identical to OpenBSD's man.cgi CSS.

Gah.  Can't we just make up our mind a ship one single CSS file
covering all we need?  The proliferation of CSS files in our tree
is disgusting.  I don't see the point in having more than one,
and if you add another, then we have *four* of them.

Also, i'm not sure about the embedded style sheet.  That should
certainly be kept minimal.  Is it needed at all?  If yes, why?
If people set their browser to not download and use CSS, then
they shouldn't get CSS but default rendering, i think.

> If it looks useful, we could rip out a decent chunk of code that
> switches between the two existing modes.  (Including some attributes
> and elements in there.)  (Yes, I'd document it better, if useful,
> and probably tidy up the *html.c files as well.)

Ideally, i'd like to have the switch and the garbage collection
in separate commits - and please don't commit before the release
is out of the door...  :-)

> (Note this doesn't include the earlier patch for SCALE_BU.)

Yes, that should also go in after the release, not before, i think,
and we should decide on the droelfzehn other broken width calculations
i found in that area.  ;-)

> Thoughts?

Thumbs up, in general.
  Ingo
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