circle.ch :: Why web site content in (X)HTML is not fundamentally bad

circle.ch weblog by Urs Gehrig

A weblog about libre software, law, technology, politics and the like.

2010-09-09T12:29:59

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23. January 2003

Why web site content in (X)HTML is not fundamentally bad
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 19:25:31

While converting my weblog contents, archived back to 2000, I already came across the fact, that there should be a way to keep these contents in a long-lasting format. In my precedent tool I used lots of HTML to format the blogentries. Currently, in b2 there is not much HTML at all. b2 converts line-breaks automatically into br-tags and I added a function to translate the links automatically into a-tags. That is one reason, why you see my links being mentioned with "[x]" brackets. Apart from laziness, this is legible too.

But today I came across that entry on whump.com [1], about treating weblog contents with UBB tags. Simon Willison [2] gives some good reasons - one is the probable lack of regex in programming languages, why one might keep its entries in (X)HTML. I am playing for longer now with the idea, to move all that stuff to something conforming, like Docbook [3] or the sheme(s) used by Bitflux. Docbook could be even a way to go, since I thought, I might have read in some lists, that OpenOffice.org [4] will come up with it; at least for Abiword [5] I am pretty sure, they plan to implement an export format.

Oh, there are also other ways to handle links. Bill Humphries is working with keywords and automatic link transformation. His weblog in XML looks like this: http://www.whump.com/moreLikeThis/XML

So imagine to have a single format for all, or at least most of your daily paperwork. Unfortunately I do not have much time at the moment. But I might get a go with Bitflux products [6] on that as soon as there _is_ some time.

Mediagonal AG [7] new partner of Bitflux GmbH has an implementation of a light version of Docbook for the Bitflux Editor already. Some Docbook manpage to start with can be found also at the Gnome project [8].

As I come from adding the links, there are solution yet for OpenOffice.org and Abiword. ;-)

[1] http://www.whump.com/moreLikeThis/link/03259
[2] http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2003/01/06/#xhtmlIsJustFine
[3] http://www.docbook.org
[4] http://xml.openoffice.org/xmerge/docbook/index.html?JServSessionIdservlets=m6j3fc9nq3
[5] http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-user/02/Oct/0046.html
[6] http://bitflux.ch/produkte/
[7] http://blog.bitflux.ch/p38.html
[8] http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gdp/handbook/gdp-handbook/index.html