[Web-SIG] htmlgen

[Ian Bicking]

On Wednesday, October 29, 2003, at 10:01 PM, Simon Willison wrote:
> A big problem here is one of style. I prefer my HTML to be lower case 
> with explicit end tags (even when optional), and often work in XHTML 
> where end tags are required. I also like my lists to have their <li>s 
> indented with 2 spaces.

HTMLgen is kind of old and predates XHTML.  Any newer system would 
create XHTML and use lower-case tags.  As far as indentation, well, the 
HTML isn't intended to be terribly readable from these systems.  The 
point is to make the source readable.  (And you actually could make the 
HTML well indented using these systems, but it's usually not that 
important)

> The point I'm trying to make is that different people have different 
> preferences for HTML, and there is no one correct way of writing it. 
> This is why I'm opposed to HTML generation tools in the standard 
> library - there are simply too many styles. HTML generation tools 
> already exist outside the standard library in abundance and I see no 
> pressing need for the default Python install to ship with one that has 
> been chosen over all of the others.

I think you probably have more opinion about HTML than many Python 
programmers.

> If there's an obvious demand from Python's user base for an HTML 
> generation system in the standard library then by all means there 
> should be one, but I don't see any reason to include one without good 
> reason when there is no obviously "correct" way of going about it.

If we were talking about a templating system, then yes, way too much 
personal preference there, but this isn't really a templating system.  
While not everyone will want to use this, the actual variations 
(despite frequent reimplementation) are not that great.

--
Ian Bicking | ianb at colorstudy.com | http://blog.ianbicking.org