Re: html variations and incompatibility and .init files

Dumas Patrice wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I would like to know what to do for the default .init file, as there are
>some variations among browser and among html. My suggestion is that the
>default .init file should produce valid 4.0 html with use of style, 
>summary and maybe class attributes, but try not to rely on these to 
>have the right result and try to be as universal as possible.
>
>I also think that there should be another .init file (called 
>compatibility.init, for example) which aims at giving a right result with 
>the maximum number of browsers, including somewhat old 
>and exotic ones. Does it seems sensible to you ?
>

Yes.  This sounds like a great idea!

>Now I have some questions/suggestions for the implementation:
>
>* For @-, there are 2 possibilities: ignore it or replace it by ­ 
>(or &173;). From http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/shy.html it seems that 
>some browser replace it by a - and some other consider it as an hyphenation
>hint (which is what @- is if I'm not wrong). 
>I suggest ignoring @- to handle both cases (this is what the current code do).
>  
>

That sounds good based on my understanding of the situation. 
 Regardless, it shouldn't hurt to preserve the status quo until we 
discover some particular problem which that doesn't satisfy.

>* style/class/summary attribute:
>Some are allready present in the code, some should replace <font> (especially
>in @smalldisplay, @smallexample as otherwise the document isn't valid), and 
>tidy rightly insists on summary in tables. But I fear that older browser don't 
>handle this nicely. What do you think/know about that ? Does old browsers
>ignore those attributes ?
>
>If the old browsers just ignore these attributes, I would go on and make the 
>changes without worrying, otherwise I suggest doing the separate 
>compatibility.init file without those attributes.
>  
>

I think browsers, even the old ones, can usually be counted on to ignore 
unrecognized tags and attributes.  I've been letting tidy put summaries 
in my tables for awhile and haven't heard complaints.  I'm not sure 
that's a large sample, since I've been largely ignoring the cvshome.org 
admin list for awhile, but some users send the reports directly to me or 
to [email protected] and I haven't heard that complaint.

Derek

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