Re: [Texmacs-dev] Standart compliance in HTML export

[Joris van der Hoeven]

> I am studying the tmhtml converter. I would like a clear statement of
> objectives regarding standard conformance for the exported HTML.
> 
> Specifically, I noticed <with|nr columns> is exported as a <multicol>
> tag. However according to IndexDotHTML[1] (my HTML reference) the
> multicol[2] tag is only supported (albeit problematically) by Netscape
> 4.x and is not part of any standard.
> 
>   [1] http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/html/
>   [2] http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/html/tagpages/m/multicol.htm
> 
> That is hardly what one would call "standard compliant HTML". Of
> course, exporting TeXmacs document to HTML is problematic because some
> constructs may only be converted using proprietary extension. My
> choice would be to just drop such structures.

I rather propose to make it possible to customize
the behaviour of the output filters in the user preferences.
This gives optimal flexibility, which is also needed because
"standards" are a very fuzzy concept anyway in the Html and *ml world.

> One could choose compliance to one of the following standards:
> 
>   -- HTML 3.2
>   -- HTML 4
>   -- HTML 4 and CSS1
>   -- HTML 4 and CSS2
> 
> It also seems that HTML 3.0 might be used with CSS1 (it has DIV and
> SPAN elements and CLASS attribute) but I was unable to figure out a
> way to link to a style definition (no HEAD/LINK or HEAD/STYLE elements
> and no STYLE attribute).
> 
> Well... one might also choose some proprietary extensions (IE,
> Mozilla, Netscape, Opera) but I think that would generally be a bad
> idea.
> 
> My personal preference would (naturally?) be HTML4+CSS2.
> 
> There is more to discuss about HTML export, but that is the first
> step.

I do not see very well how we can make use of CSS2 yet...
I propose to use Html 4 plus MathML for mathematics.
If certain tags have natural translations in proprietary
extensions, then this should become optional.