From: Albert Wagner <alwagner@...>
Date: 2002-03-20T09:31:52+09:00
Subject: Re: web templating for static sites?

On Tuesday 19 March 2002 05:49 pm, you wrote:
> * Albert L. Wagner (alwagner@uark.edu) wrote:
> > How do you Ruby/HTML guys deal with the different versions of HTML and
> > browsers?
>
> Semantic XHTML 1.1, biodegradable CSS 2, to hell with people who expect
> me to directly support broken half-decade old browsers.  They get
> various degrees of the HTML 2.0 look (which, don't get me wrong, I
> ensure is entirely usable).
>
> NS 4 supports font/colour stuff reasonably (sort of), and the things it
> breaks can be hidden behind @import statements.  If you want absolute
> control, use PDF or Flash, and accept that you're leaving the realm of
> the web for some mystery binary realm that happens to use HTTP as a
> transport :)
>
> > I would be interested in something that would take, e.g., a page of
> > HTML4.01 with Style sheets and do a reasonable job of porting it
> > backward to earlier standards and older browsers.
>
> Why bother?  You're not going to convert the CSS box model to tables
> automagically, so aside from throwing in a few font tags you're not
> going to gain much (especially when pretty much every browser on earth
> already understands such basic CSS and those that don't are used by a
> total of about 0.001% of the web).
>
> The best you're likely to do is run an XML parser or an XSL over the
> XHTML and reformat it to XHTML 1.0 Transitional using a manual target
> template rather than banging your head against the wall trying to
> generalise a HTML+CSS -> HTML Transitional converter.

You're probably right.  But it seems so damned elitist.  BTW, I went to your 
site:  you're a bigamist; Hanging around the Ruby list and cavorting with PHP 
at home. tsk-tsk.
-- 
Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of