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Posted to dev@httpd.apache.org by "William A. Rowe, Jr." <wr...@rowe-clan.net> on 2001/09/05 05:12:32 UTC
Fw: Regarding lower-case HTML tags
Josh just came up with what I believe is the best explanation of if and
when to reformat - I think this applies equally well to sources and docs.
I'd added only one caviat - changes to the format should always -preceed-
the patch to the actual code, and there shouldn't be format changes if there
is no work to commit that the existing format didn't interfere with.
Note that +/- whitespace patches (including newlines) are _simple_ to ignore.
Changes to anything else (capitalization, etc) are most definately not.
I personally reformat often - but only if it 1. increases legibility in
2. a module I'm actively refactoring. But Joshes' explanation is great :)
Bill
From: "Joshua Slive" <sl...@commerce.ubc.ca>
To: "Apache Documentation Project" <ap...@apache.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 9:51 PM
> On Tue, 4 Sep 2001, Rich Bowen wrote:
>
> > I've been using tidy, from the w3c, for a while now, to do
> > pretty-reformatting of HTML documents. One of the things that it does is
> > lower-case HTML tags. I was wondering, in light of comments made a week
> > or two ago, whether it would be worthwhile to do this with files in the
> > docs as I a working with them?
> >
> > The downside is that it will create a diff in which every line in the
> > file changes (in most cases), and I did not want to start submitting
> > enormous diffs, without running this past folks first.
>
> A similar question just threatened to start a flamewar on dev@httpd ;-)
>
> My opinion is that it is not a big deal either way. (It is not like
> source code where you potentially mess up everyone's patches.) But
> I prefer not to unnecessarily reformat. The only time I do reformat is
> when the existing format makes the doc very hard to work with.
>
> In other words, if it makes it significantly easier for you to work
> with, then go ahead and reformat. But don't reformat just for the
> sake of consistency. (I don't care about consistency here because
> it is invisible to the end user.)
>
> Of course, others are bound to have other opinions.
>
> Joshua.
>
>
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Re: Fw: Regarding lower-case HTML tags
Posted by Justin Erenkrantz <je...@ebuilt.com>.
On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 10:12:32PM -0500, William A. Rowe, Jr. wrote:
> Josh just came up with what I believe is the best explanation of if and
> when to reformat - I think this applies equally well to sources and docs.
>
> I'd added only one caviat - changes to the format should always -preceed-
> the patch to the actual code, and there shouldn't be format changes if there
> is no work to commit that the existing format didn't interfere with.
>
> Note that +/- whitespace patches (including newlines) are _simple_ to ignore.
> Changes to anything else (capitalization, etc) are most definately not.
>
> I personally reformat often - but only if it 1. increases legibility in
> 2. a module I'm actively refactoring. But Joshes' explanation is great :)
I'm wondering if we can add this on the site somewhere so that future
committers don't end up in the same trap I found myself in.
(There is no place anywhere that says that we don't actively follow
the style guide...I was under the (false) impression that we should
be actively following it...) -- justin
Re: Fw: Regarding lower-case HTML tags
Posted by Justin Erenkrantz <je...@ebuilt.com>.
On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 10:12:32PM -0500, William A. Rowe, Jr. wrote:
> Josh just came up with what I believe is the best explanation of if and
> when to reformat - I think this applies equally well to sources and docs.
>
> I'd added only one caviat - changes to the format should always -preceed-
> the patch to the actual code, and there shouldn't be format changes if there
> is no work to commit that the existing format didn't interfere with.
>
> Note that +/- whitespace patches (including newlines) are _simple_ to ignore.
> Changes to anything else (capitalization, etc) are most definately not.
>
> I personally reformat often - but only if it 1. increases legibility in
> 2. a module I'm actively refactoring. But Joshes' explanation is great :)
I'm wondering if we can add this on the site somewhere so that future
committers don't end up in the same trap I found myself in.
(There is no place anywhere that says that we don't actively follow
the style guide...I was under the (false) impression that we should
be actively following it...) -- justin
Re: Fw: Regarding lower-case HTML tags
Posted by Martin Kraemer <Ma...@Fujitsu-Siemens.com>.
On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 09:19:27AM -0400, Greg Marr wrote:
>
> The reason it does that is that XML is case-sensitive for tag names,
> and the HTML working group chose to use lowercase for XHTML. Thus,
> if the pages were ever to be marked as XHTML, they'd need to be
> lowercase.
The XHTML reasoning is that in most cases, the text between tags consists
of more lowercase text than uppercase text, and thus the overall document
will compress better when sent thru mod_gz (ducks ;-)
Because more text will be "equal" (i.e., share common sub-strings), the
compression ration will improve.
Martin
--
<Ma...@Fujitsu-Siemens.com> | Fujitsu Siemens
Fon: +49-89-636-46021, FAX: +49-89-636-47655 | 81730 Munich, Germany
Re: Fw: Regarding lower-case HTML tags
Posted by Greg Marr <gr...@alum.wpi.edu>.
At 11:12 PM 09/04/2001, William A. Rowe, Jr. wrote:
> > > I've been using tidy, from the w3c, for a while now, to do
> > > pretty-reformatting of HTML documents. One of the things that
> it does is
> > > lower-case HTML tags. I was wondering, in light of comments
> made a week
> > > or two ago, whether it would be worthwhile to do this with
> files in the
> > > docs as I a working with them?
The reason it does that is that XML is case-sensitive for tag names,
and the HTML working group chose to use lowercase for XHTML. Thus,
if the pages were ever to be marked as XHTML, they'd need to be
lowercase.
--
Greg Marr
gregm@alum.wpi.edu
"We thought you were dead."
"I was, but I'm better now." - Sheridan, "The Summoning"
Re: Fw: Regarding lower-case HTML tags
Posted by Greg Marr <gr...@alum.wpi.edu>.
At 11:12 PM 09/04/2001, William A. Rowe, Jr. wrote:
> > > I've been using tidy, from the w3c, for a while now, to do
> > > pretty-reformatting of HTML documents. One of the things that
> it does is
> > > lower-case HTML tags. I was wondering, in light of comments
> made a week
> > > or two ago, whether it would be worthwhile to do this with
> files in the
> > > docs as I a working with them?
The reason it does that is that XML is case-sensitive for tag names,
and the HTML working group chose to use lowercase for XHTML. Thus,
if the pages were ever to be marked as XHTML, they'd need to be
lowercase.
--
Greg Marr
gregm@alum.wpi.edu
"We thought you were dead."
"I was, but I'm better now." - Sheridan, "The Summoning"