Re: web page status

[Jonathan Wakely <cow at compsoc dot man dot ac dot uk>]

On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 07:21:44PM -0400, Phil Edwards wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 11:13:19AM -0500, Benjamin Kosnik wrote:
> > it's pretty easy to verify. Any thoughts on this? I would think that all the
> > libstdc++ pages should validate.
> 
> They would validate as old normal HTML, before the rules changed in XHTML.
> Right now the webserver is prepending (by design) a DOCTYPE string saying
> that we're XHTML.

It isn't, for the libstdc++ pages. They're served as is, and since the
files in CVS don't have DOCTYPEs they're served without DOCTYPEs. So they
ain't validating as anything right now, on- or offline.

> I'm not particularly good at XHTML.  (In fact, I downright hate some of
> the new rules.)  But I think I can fix some of the errors, with help from
> validator.w3.org.

You can implement a C++ standard library, but you're not particularly good
at XHTML?! You're obviously not trying ;)  and rightly so, I'd just like
to say I really appreciate the work done by everyone who makes libstdc++
so damn good. I've lurked on this list for a while and one thing that
doesn't get posted often is "sterling work". Thanks.

> Jonathan Wakely posted a patch to add the DOCTYPE headers to the files,

That'll be this one:
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/libstdc++/2002-09/msg00149.html

> so that they can be viewed offline.  I never checked in the patch due to
> the skydiving accident.  My only question is what will the web server's
> preprocessor do when it sees a DOCTYPE already there?  I'll try to
> investigate that, but don't hold your breath.

Since the server seems to be ignoring the libstdc++ pages anyway, applying
the patch at the URL above will make the pages valid, period.  It saves
figuring out how to make the server preprocess the libstdc++ pages (I seem
to remember Phil and Gerald accusing each other of being responsible :) and
makes the pages valid offline too.

In the long-term, if the pages should match to the main GCC wwwdocs and be
pre-processed to add the headers, then maybe there should be a way to add
similar headers to the sources and generate docs for offline viewing?
(If there isn't a way to do this I might have just given myself something
else to do. Oops)

Jon


-- 
"Structure is nothing if it is all you've got. Skeletons spook people if
 they try to walk around on their own; I really wonder why XML does not."
	- Erik Naggum