DOCTYPE and therefore - output scheme - selection

[Maticomp]

Hi there!

I'm using cmsms for almost all of my projects (unless some totally specific functionality is needed). I'm still fighting with "XHTML" forcing by CMS Made Simple. The problem is, XHTML sent as text/html is just a tag soup, and not a XHTML. It would be possible to content negotiate application/xml+xhtml for capable browsers by adding just a few lines of code - but that doesn't solve everything. My major problem is that customers often expect WYSIWYG capabilities such as TinyMCE or so. None of these editors, however, can guarantee well-formedness of output code, no matter of how the end-user acts with it. Without XML well-formedness guarantee sending the page as XHTML is completely mishap for me.

I either send proper XHTML page (with proper mimetype and well-formedness) or I do send HTML 4.01 Strict. Changing the doctype in template is not a problem at all. CMS Made Simple, however, forces the output to use trailing slashes (/>). I have found a method, listed on the forums, with additional tag put into events that changes the slashes with simple str_replace, but it's less than optimal solution.

Even though it's not a _big_ problem, it would certainly be nice to be able to change output behaviour (choosing between xhtml or html) directly in CMS Made Simple.

Sorry for the long description, I'm definitely a standards geek, and sending fake tagsoup labelled XHTML is just not for me.


Best wishes for the future, keep the great work!
Mateusz

[Pierre M.]

Hello,

you can make what you want in the templates. HTML 2.0 anyone ?-)
you can tune (tidy option ?) and even disable WYSIWYG.
you can tune the webserver about text/html, text/xml, application/xml+xhtml...
you may like http://mod-tidy.sourceforge.net/

Have fun with CMSms

Pierre M.

[Maticomp]

In fact, not everything can be tuned in the templates - cmsms puts some trailing slashes by itself, not template controlled. And of course, I know I can disable WYSIWYG The problem is, sometimes it's badly wanted by others =) I wish XStandard was free...

[Maticomp]

I know it is available, I said I wish the XStandard was free - there is Lite version available, this one however cannot clean MS Word input (and copying from MS Word is the biggest source of bad code TinyMCE can't clean up by itself). XStandard Pro is commercial.

[Pierre M.]

TinyMCE as a "copy as text" button.
Has FCKeditor a "copy from Word" one ?

Pierre M.

[Maticomp]

Yeah, there are some ways of inputing plain text from word - you can even copy to notepad, and then to TinyMCE/FCK. Problems begin when you try to copy some formattings (lists, tables, headings, etc.) - "Clean" option doesn't manage to clean it perfecly. The only editor I know can really manage to be "idiot-proff" (in terms of people using crazy styles in Word, and then copying to CMS admin site) is XStandards Pro.

That's why I try to implement markdown/textile as often as I can - sometimes, unfortunately, additional formattings and WYSIWYG is needed. Then HTML4 is better solution than XHTML.

[KO]

Yes FCK also has this "paste from word" but "paste as text" always worked better.

[10010110]

Still, none of the replies has really got the point as there are people that don’t know sh!t about HTML and still wanna edit pages, and they probably don’t care about “paste as text” or stuff like that at all. You always, always, always have to assume that average visitors/users are ignorant and/or stupid and gotta keep things as simple/obvious/user friendly as possible (as hard as this sounds unfortunately there are a lot of stupid and ignorant people out there…).

So instead of giving correct but relatively unsatisfying tips take note of it and think of a real solution for that justified request.

[Pierre M.]

Here are my €0.02 :
€0.01 : teach users to paste via the clipboard. Advantage : nice xHTML code. Drawback : plain text only.
€0.01 : join the WYSIWYG team and fix the "paste from Word" thing. Advantage : works as needed. Drawback : need to be contributed.

Pierre M.

[Johann]

Well, there is a rather simple solution for that problem:
just go to your CMSMS index-file and change the line that says:

header(...);

to the code found here: http://www.workingwith.me.uk/articles/scripting/mimetypes (or elsewhere on the web).
Obviously, you could easily change the code to only deliver html 4.01.

[FantomCircuit]

I wish for the same feature. I am not so concerned with WYSIWYG editors, but I want CMSMS to output an HTML 4.01 Strict page, and cmsms puts in trailing slashes for stuff like the stylesheet meta links, selflink meta links, news feed rss meta element and so on, causing the page to become invalid.

I know it might take a bit of implementing, but it would save me and others having to go through the source every time I set up a new site and removing all the slashes from the code.

[calguy1000]

Can you please post one or more detailed descriptions of the exact problems (with examples) in the forge.  Then maybe we can take a look at it.  or at least, not lose track of your issue.