Re: [Autobuild-discuss] A few nits with autobuild

[Julien ÉLIE]

Hi Simon,

>> There is an issue with the value of HTML tokens:
>>    <h3><a name="inn-GCC 4.6.1">
>>
>> Spaces should be stripped, or converted to something else.  (A dash?)
> 
> It seems to work in IceCat, are spaces really forbidden in links or
> names?

Yes, spaces are forbidden in IDs.

You can try to validate pages with:
    http://validator.w3.org/


>From the specification:
    http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/

** Further, since the set of legal values for attributes of type ID is much 
smaller than for those of type CDATA, the type of the name attribute has been 
changed to NMTOKEN. This attribute is constrained such that it can only have 
the same values as type ID, or as the Name production in XML 1.0 Section 2.3, 
production 5.
Note that the collection of legal values in XML 1.0 Section 2.3, production 5 
is much larger than that permitted to be used in the ID and NAME types defined 
in HTML 4. When defining fragment identifiers to be backward-compatible, only 
strings matching the pattern [A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9:_.-]* should be used. See 
Section 6.2 of [HTML4] for more information.

-> The first char is a letter, and no space is allowed in the token.  Only 
letters, digits, ':', '_', '.' and '-'.
Maybe everything that is not valid should be substituted by a '-' in Autobuild.


** Finally, note that XHTML 1.0 has deprecated the name attribute of the a, 
applet, form, frame, iframe, img, and map elements, and it will be removed from 
XHTML in subsequent versions.

-> "id" should be used instead of "name".




>> Why are there all these
>>    <br />
>> at the end of the HTML page?  Couldn't they be removed from the
>> autobuild Perl script?  (I see it prints lots of them!)
> 
> Yeah, that is a bit of a hack.  The reason is to make sure the last <a
> name>  link will focus at the top of the page, otherwise it is difficult
> to find it.

It is the behaviour of *all* the anchors.  When the page is not long enough,
there is no reason for the focus to be exactly at the top of the page.
Changing that default, expected behaviour is a bit disturbing.




> If there weren't some blanks at the end, it wouldn't focus correctly.
> Is there a better solution for this?

Not that I am aware of.  It is how HTML anchors are designed.




>> --timestamp mentions a preferred `YYYY-MM-DD+HH.MM.SS' format.
>> Yet, `YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS' is said to be preferred in the source code
>> of the autobuild Perl script.  I also believe this standardized format
>> is better.
> 
> I agree.  Fixed in git, thank you!

It should also be changed in Section 4.2:
    http://josefsson.org/autobuild/manual/autobuild.html

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« Le cercle est le plus long chemin d'un point au même point. »
  (Tom Stoppard, _Every Good Boy Deserves Favour_)