RE: convert xhtml back to html

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  • John Krukoff

    RE: convert xhtml back to html

    -----Original Message-----
    From: python-list-bounces+jkrukof f=ltgc.com@pyth on.org [mailto:python-
    list-bounces+jkrukof f=ltgc.com@pyth on.org] On Behalf Of Tim Arnold
    Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2008 9:34 AM
    To: python-list@python.org
    Subject: convert xhtml back to html

    hi, I've got lots of xhtml pages that need to be fed to MS HTML Workshop
    to
    create CHM files. That application really hates xhtml, so I need to
    convert
    self-ending tags (e.g. <br />) to plain html (e.g. <br>).

    Seems simple enough, but I'm having some trouble with it. regexps trip up
    because I also have to take into account 'img', 'meta', 'link' tags, not
    just the simple 'br' and 'hr' tags. Well, maybe there's a simple way to do
    that with regexps, but my simpleminded <img[^(/>)]+/doesn't work. I'm
    not
    enough of a regexp pro to figure out that lookahead stuff.

    I'm not sure where to start now; I looked at BeautifulSoup and
    BeautifulStoneS oup, but I can't see how to modify the actual tag.

    thanks,
    --Tim Arnold


    --
    http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

    One method which wouldn't require much python code, would be to run the
    XHTML through a simple identity XSL tranform with the output method set to
    HTML. It would have the benefit that you wouldn't have to worry about any of
    the specifics of the transformation, though you would need an external
    dependency.

    As far as I know, both 4suite and lxml (my personal favorite:
    http://codespeak.net/lxml/) support XSLT in python.

    It might work out fine for you, but mixing regexps and XML always seems to
    work out badly in the end for me.
    ---------
    John Krukoff
    jkrukoff@ltgc.c om

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