RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT

[=?iso-8859-2?Q?K=F8i=B9tof_=AEelechovski?=]

It is common knowledge that XHTML is better HTML and you can serve XHTML content as HTML.
However, the second statement is incorrect, for various reasons;
it is enough to say that the HTML validator does not tolerate XML-style empty tags.
It seems serving XHTML to the browser is of no advantage and can cause serious problems if the browser does not understand the difference.
This raises the question of downgrading XHTML to HTML.
I could not find any relevant instruction at the WWW Corporation so I decided I have to roll my own with XSLT.
I attach the XSLT code and I kindly ask for comments (because I am a novice in this area).
Please note that all tags and attributes have to be copied stripping the napespace;
<xsl:copydoes not work as expected because I get <br></brinstead of <bronly.
I decided to copy the comments explicitly
in order to be able to embed Internet Explorer conditional inclusion comments into the output.
Chris

<xsl:styleshe et version="1.0"

xmlns:xsl="http ://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:output

method="html" doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"

doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"

/>

<xsl:template match="@*"<xsl: attribute name="{name()}" <xsl:value-of select="." /</xsl:attribute>

</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="*"

<xsl:element name="{name()}" <xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()" /</xsl:element

</xsl:template<xs l:template match="comment( )"<xsl:copy /</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

[Lars Eighner]

Re: RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT

In our last episode, <ett939$25rn$1@ news2.ipartners .pl>, the lovely and
talented Køi¹tof ®elechovski broadcast on
comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html:

It is common knowledge that XHTML is better HTML

No, it isn't.

--
Lars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/ <http://myspace.com/larseighner>
Countdown: 670 days to go.

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Kristof_Zelechovski?=]

Re: RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT


Uzytkownik "Lars Eighner" <usenet@larseig hner.comnapisal w wiadomosci news:slrnf04cg3 .is2.usenet@goo dwill.larseighn er.com...

In our last episode, <ett939$25rn$1@ news2.ipartners .pl>, the lovely and
talented Køi¹tof ®elechovski broadcast on
comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html:

>It is common knowledge that XHTML is better HTML

No, it isn't.

It is not better HTML but it is a common opinion.
Chris

[Pierre Senellart]

Re: RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT

Křištof Želechovski ,comp.infosyste ms.www.authoring.html:

doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"

Ideally, you should keep the DTD kind (Transitional/Strict) from the
XHTML document, but there is unfortunately no way to do this in XSLT.

<xsl:template match="@*"<xsl: attribute name="{name()}" >
<xsl:value-of select="." /</xsl:attribute</xsl:template>

I am not sure this is the good strategy: actually, you'd probably want to
keep only attributes in the default namespace (so as to remove
xml:lang/xml:space, for instance):

<xsl:template match="@*[namespace-uri()='']">
<xsl:copy />
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="@*" />

<xsl:template match="*">
>
<xsl:element name="{name()}" <xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()" /</xsl:element>
>
</xsl:template>

Same here, you probably want to keep only elements of the xhtml
namespace; note also the use of local-name() instead of name(), in case
your original XHTML document use namespace prefixes:

<xsl:template match="*[namespace-uri()='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml']">
<xsl:element name="{local-name()}">
<xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node ()" />
</xsl:element>
</xsl:template>

Untested.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT

Scripsit Kristof Zelechovski:

>>It is common knowledge that XHTML is better HTML

>>
>No, it isn't.

>
It is not better HTML but it is a common opinion.

If you don't know the difference between knowledge and opinion, I suggest
that you postpone further participation in public discussions until you do.
That's just my opinion; all people have the right to ridicule themselves in
public.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Kristof_Zelechovski?=]

Re: RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT


Uzytkownik "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.finapisal w wiadomosci news:9ktMh.2212 7$mh2.11690@rea der1.news.sauna lahti.fi...

Scripsit Kristof Zelechovski:

>>>It is common knowledge that XHTML is better HTML
>>>
>>No, it isn't.

>>
>It is not better HTML but it is a common opinion.

If you don't know the difference between knowledge and opinion, I suggest
that you postpone further participation in public discussions until you do.
That's just my opinion; all people have the right to ridicule themselves in
public.

I have not ridiculed myself. You are trying to ridicule me. Have fun.
Chris

[=?UTF-8?Q?K=C5=99i=C5=A1tof_=C5=BDelechovski?=]

Re: RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT


Użytkownik "Pierre Senellart" <invalid@invali d.invalidnapisa ł w wiadomości news:ettkis$1mg k$1@nef.ens.fr. ..

Křištof Želechovski ,comp.infosyste ms.www.authoring.html:

>doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
>doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"

Ideally, you should keep the DTD kind (Transitional/Strict) from the
XHTML document, but there is unfortunately no way to do this in XSLT.

Since all my pages are transitional, I do not have such a problem.
It seems uncommon to have some pages transitional and some pages strictly conformant;
you usually decide one way or the other.

><xsl:templat e match="@*"<xsl: attribute name="{name()}" >
><xsl:value-of select="." /</xsl:attribute</xsl:template>

I am not sure this is the good strategy: actually, you'd probably want to
keep only attributes in the default namespace (so as to remove
xml:lang/xml:space, for instance):

Good point.

<xsl:template match="@*[namespace-uri()='']">
<xsl:copy />

As I have already noticed, copy does not work because it leaves the namespace qualification,
as in ‘xhtml:clear= "none"’, and does not remove the default value, as in ‘xhtml:restri cted="restricte d"’.

</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="@*" />

><xsl:templat e match="*"
>
><xsl:element name="{name()}" <xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()" /</xsl:element
>
></xsl:template>

Same here, you probably want to keep only elements of the xhtml
namespace; note also the use of local-name() instead of name(), in case
your original XHTML document use namespace prefixes:

It does not, but using the local name does not harm either.
While custom elements should not make it to the output, you have to decide what to do with them if you use them.
Skipping them altogether is one possibility, but I can imagine it need not be the best solution.
On the other hand, if you let them pass through, the validation fails
and at least you know you are loosing information.

<xsl:template match="*[namespace-uri()='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml']">
<xsl:element name="{local-name()}">
<xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node ()" />
</xsl:element>
</xsl:template>

Untested.

Thanks a lot.
Can anyone make a comment why no public resource for this transformation is available at the WWW Corp.?
Chris

[Nick Kew]

Re: RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT

On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 07:52:23 +0100
Křištof Želechovski <giecrilj@stegn y.2a.plwrote:

It is common knowledge that XHTML is better HTML

Sinc we don't know you here, it's not so easy to judge whether
that's intended to be ironic. But you've already been bitten
by those who take what you said literally.

> This raises the question
of downgrading XHTML to HTML.

If you so wish.

> I could not find any relevant
instruction at the WWW Corporation so I decided I have to roll my own
with XSLT.

XSLT is an extremely inefficient way to do this (parsing an entire
document to an in-memory tree is inherently very expensive).
Far better to use SAX. There are modules for Apache that will let
you transform between HTML and XHTML on the fly, going in
whichever direction you please. Not that I'd recommend using them
unless you have an existing need to parse the markup.

--
Nick Kew

Application Development with Apache - the Apache Modules Book

http://www.apachetutor.org/

[Sherm Pendley]

Re: RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT

Nick Kew <nick@grimnir.w ebthing.comwrit es:

On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 07:52:23 +0100
Křištof Želechovski <giecrilj@stegn y.2a.plwrote:
>

>> This raises the question
>of downgrading XHTML to HTML.

>
If you so wish.
>

>> I could not find any relevant
>instruction at the WWW Corporation so I decided I have to roll my own
>with XSLT.

>
XSLT is an extremely inefficient way to do this (parsing an entire
document to an in-memory tree is inherently very expensive).
Far better to use SAX.

Even SAX seems an awfully convoluted way to do this... Why not just use tidy?

tidy -ashtml infile.xhtml outfile.html

sherm--

--
Web Hosting by West Virginians, for West Virginians: http://wv-www.net
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

[Rob]

Re: RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT

Jukka K. Korpela schreef:

Scripsit Kristof Zelechovski:
>

>>>It is common knowledge that XHTML is better HTML
>>>
>>No, it isn't.

>>
>It is not better HTML but it is a common opinion.

>
If you don't know the difference between knowledge and opinion, I
suggest that you postpone further participation in public discussions
until you do. That's just my opinion; all people have the right to
ridicule themselves in public.
>

I think Kristof was very subtly telling the OP that it is more a matter
of opinion than of knowledge.

Rob

[Nick Kew]

Re: RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT

On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 08:43:55 -0400
Sherm Pendley <spamtrap@dot-app.orgwrote:

XSLT is an extremely inefficient way to do this (parsing an entire
document to an in-memory tree is inherently very expensive).
Far better to use SAX.

>
Even SAX seems an awfully convoluted way to do this... Why not just
use tidy?
>
tidy -ashtml infile.xhtml outfile.html

Because tidy parses to an in-memory tree. Which is, as I said,
hugely expensive.

Yes of course, if all you need is a commandline tool for processing
static files, then that's fine: you have hundreds of trivial solutions
to choose from. But if you want to do anything more interesting
like process outgoing content in a server, you want something
more efficient. In the case of Apache, the lack of a parseChunk
API makes tidy even more expensive than XSLT for this.

--
Nick Kew

Application Development with Apache - the Apache Modules Book

http://www.apachetutor.org/

[Andreas Prilop]

Re: RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT

On Thu, 22 Mar 2007, Køi¹tof ®elechovski wrote:

It is common knowledge that XHTML is better HTML and you can serve XHTML content as HTML.

It is common knowledge that vodka is better whisky and you can serve
vodka content in whisky glasses.

--
In memoriam Alan J. Flavell

http://groups.google.com/groups/search?q=author:Alan.J.Flavell

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Kristof_Zelechovski?=]

Re: RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT


Uzytkownik "Rob" <robwaaijenberg @hotmail.comnap isal w wiadomosci news:46027d3c$0 $321$e4fe514c@n ews.xs4all.nl.. .

Jukka K. Korpela schreef:

>Scripsit Kristof Zelechovski:
>

>>>>It is common knowledge that XHTML is better HTML
>>>>
>>>No, it isn't.
>>>
>>It is not better HTML but it is a common opinion.

>
>If you don't know the difference between knowledge and opinion, I
>suggest that you postpone further participation in public discussions
>until you do. That's just my opinion; all people have the right to
>ridicule themselves in public.
>

I think Kristof was very subtly telling the OP that it is more a matter
of opinion than of knowledge.

That is, I was subtly telling it to myself, because I am the OP.
Chris

[Rob Waaijenberg]

Re: RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT

Kristof Zelechovski schreef:

Uzytkownik "Rob" <robwaaijenberg @hotmail.comnap isal w wiadomosci news:46027d3c$0 $321$e4fe514c@n ews.xs4all.nl.. .

>Jukka K. Korpela schreef:

>>Scripsit Kristof Zelechovski:
>>>
>>>>>It is common knowledge that XHTML is better HTML
>>>>No, it isn't.
>>>It is not better HTML but it is a common opinion.
>>If you don't know the difference between knowledge and opinion, I
>>suggest that you postpone further participation in public discussions
>>until you do. That's just my opinion; all people have the right to
>>ridicule themselves in public.
>>>

>I think Kristof was very subtly telling the OP that it is more a matter
>of opinion than of knowledge.
>>

>
That is, I was subtly telling it to myself, because I am the OP.
Chris

Oops

--
Rob Waaijenberg

[Simon Brooke]

Re: RFC: From XHTML to HTML via XSLT

in message <ett939$25rn$1@ news2.ipartners .pl>, Křištof Želechovski
('giecrilj@steg ny.2a.pl') wrote:

It is common knowledge that XHTML is better HTML and you can serve XHTML
content as HTML. However, the second statement is incorrect, for various
reasons; it is enough to say that the HTML validator does not tolerate
XML-style empty tags. It seems serving XHTML to the browser is of no
advantage and can cause serious problems if the browser does not
understand the difference. This raises the question of downgrading XHTML
to HTML. I could not find any relevant instruction at the WWW Corporation
so I decided I have to roll my own with XSLT. I attach the XSLT code and
I kindly ask for comments (because I am a novice in this area). Please
note that all tags and attributes have to be copied stripping the
napespace; <xsl:copydoes not work as expected because I get <br></br>
instead of <bronly. I decided to copy the comments explicitly in order
to be able to embed Internet Explorer conditional inclusion comments into
the output. Chris

My comments:

(1) there is no point in doing this, XHTML is not broken.
(2) if you did want to do this, the stylesheet you would need would be:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<xsl:styleshe et version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http ://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:xhtml="ht tp://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<xsl:output indent="yes" method="html"
doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Strict//EN"
doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"/>

<xsl:template match="@* | node()">
<xsl:copy>
<xsl:apply-templates select="@* | node()"/>
</xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>


--
simon@jasmine.o rg.uk (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; It's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
;; Voltaire RIP Dr David Kelly 1945-2004