h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"(eg FOOTNOTEs are now hyperlinked and display the FOOTNOTE contents as "hovertext" when the mouse is positioned over the footnote link in the body)."

Well.. in some browsers, maybe.. I do like the two-way hyperlink, though..

"Comments: The comment syntax is <!-- this is a comment -->. GuideML
does not allow double hyphens inside a comment block, so
<!-----------this is a comment -------------> will fail."

So will -- things inside the comment.. This should be fixed, IMNSHO. The fact that it blares the comment on the page is annoying, too.

"Pages cannot contain the ampersand (&amp character."

This is annoying, but as & and && are used as symbols in coding, I can live with it... If I find it. My main complaint is that when the conversion took place, there should have been safeguards in place to fix the pages already written in the old GuideML, rather than leaving all the broken pieces lying about. (Especially for the commonly used things.)

"There are some new GuideML tags (called GuideML Gadgets) for the "Who's Online" list and for smilies."

This is an example of above rant.

"(eg . To get it to display correctly change the SCRIPT tag to (the space is between the two is vital)."

You mean they've broken the closing shortcut (<tag/&gt for some, but not all tags? This is just plain silly.

"Links to h2g2 cgi scripts (eg user.cgi, index.cgi) won't work. The new URLs for these cgis is /user, /index etc."

Another thing that should have been handled during conversion.

Also: Did they do away with the controls that would cause the GuideML parser to ignore what was between the tags? I used this extensively and really dread going back through trying to discover how to fix those...

Your post might be better on http://www.h2g2.com/A388325 the Technical Feedback page where it might elicit an official response - though I have provided my unofficial take on your points below .

Some of this pages shortcomings are attributable to the fact that it was written during final beta testing of the site change (ie prior to it's launch) & not all issues eg browser compatibility issues (eg footnote hovertext) had been identified - though the page was based on the reported experiences of a number of users/testers using a variety of browsers - & it was intended to help users overcome problems encountered during the site change. I stuck to the how to fix problems & I didn't get into the whys & wherefores of the changes because I don't know them - I'm not part of the Towers & (despite popular misconception) I don't have access to any large amount of "inside info" on the site.

>So will -- things inside the comment..

As the page says - "GuideML does not allow double hyphens inside a comment block"; and -- being a double hyphen...

If my memory serves me correctly, when I raised this with Jim Lynn in June the reason is XML syntax won't allow the double hyphen inside a comment & h2g2 is moving towards full XML compliance.

>The fact that it blares the comment on the page is annoying, too.

Do you mean that you get comments displayed on the page? It may be a browser thing - I don't see comments (compliant with the -- rule ones anyway) contained in pages.

>This is annoying, but as & and && are used as symbols in coding, I can live with it... If I find it. My main complaint is that when the conversion took place, there should have been safeguards in place to fix the pages already written in the old GuideML, rather than leaving all the broken pieces lying about.

Pages containing & at the time of conversion displayed correctly, the issue/error only arose when the page was edited, so I don't know that there were any "broken pieces lying about" - for this change at least.

IMNSHO the problem with automatically converting code is that it would probably break as many pages as it "fixed" - eg not all & on pages are straight text &amp; &gt; &lt; &#nnnn; etc being a number of commonly used pieces of code in pages. IMHO the other problem would be testing the conversion code - I don't know of anyone who would volunteer to proofread all the pages on the site that contain an & to make sure the conversion worked correctly before unleashing it on the unsuspecting public/live site. If you'd like to volunteer I'm sure Mark Moxon would love to hear from you

>"There are some new GuideML tags (called GuideML Gadgets) for the "Who's Online" list and for smilies."
>This is an example of above rant.

If you mean the automatically convert point - as there is no way of ensuring that users had stuck to the "official" version of the Who's Online" code & it's layout a simple string replacement routine would not have worked - see my comment on testing the conversion program & proofreading pages above.

>"(eg . To get it to display correctly change the SCRIPT tag to (the space is between the two is vital)."
You mean they've broken the closing shortcut (<tag/&gt for some, but not all tags? This is just plain silly.

No, apparently the problem (which only applied to SCRIPT SRC - which isn't GuideML) was caused by a bug in some browsers (IE being one ) that caused the display fault even though all the page HTML was delivered to the browser only part of it was displayed.

>Did they do away with the controls that would cause the GuideML parser to ignore what was between the tags?

I don't know what you mean - are you referring to a particular tag?

hope it helps
;^)#

Bruce's reply is spot on.

As for why we didn't automatically convert old pages - manpower and time. Any conversion would have had to be performed during the upgrade process, which already took three hours. It would have taken three weeks if we had tried to convert all pages, even if we had some kind of automated system.

What we *did* do (and still do) is try to be as forgiving as possible to the GuideML that people use. We already ignore case in tag names, even though XML is case sensitive. We attempt to correct illegal use of ampersands when displaying pages (although we do complain now if you try to use ampersands illegally on new or edited pages). And we still cope with people using instead of .

So we didn't completely ignore the issue, we did what we could given the time and resources available (neither of which were plentiful).

*sighs* ... I know. Forgive my rant -- may calmer heads prevail.

The tag I was wondering about specifically, Bruce, is the
<![CDATA[ ... ]]>
bit.

'Nonnie
(Who would need a month of nothing else to do for a search and replace mission.)

PS: As for the dashes, my "Dash Mania" journal post leaves my take.

'Nonnie

I'm not sure about CDATA - it seems to break pages - but h2g2 have been silent about it's current/future status.

;^)#

We added CDATA as a bodge to make it easier for people to put random chunks of HTML in their GuideML without breaking them. It's not really suitable for general use. And if we're going to prevent users putting javascript on their pages in favour of gadgets, then letting CDATA through would defeat that whole point.

Sorry.

Quite understandable - the confirmation is handy though

;^)#

Yes.. that makes sense.. And besides.. I think all the new smileys are making me to giddy to mind anymore.

'Nonnie