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Simple conversions from HTML to simple markups are disappointing

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From: Luca Saiu <luca@ageinghacker.net>

Subject: Simple conversions from HTML to simple markups are disappointing

Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2022 13:25:29 +0100

Message-ID: <ssjhge$k74$1@dont-email.me>

Message content

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Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Disgusted by the web with its anti-features, its enormous gratuitous

complexity and its essentially proprietary nature (the effort of

re-implementing a significant component from scratch is unrealistic for

single developers), I have recently opened Gemini and Gopher services

on ageinghacker.net .

I plan to publish new information on the simpler systems as well, rather

than only on my web site.

About existing web pages I had thought about machine-converting HTML to

Gopher and Gemini markup, using lynx -dump along with some simple Unix

shell scripting. The existing HTML on my web site is hand-written and

very simple; I had at least the good taste of not using JavaScript.

After experimenting for one day or two I have to admit that the result

is disappointing. The conversion is unnatural and I find that at the

same time some important information is lost (<tt> and <pre>) while some

which is irrelevant is preserved (icons). Having out-of-line links does

not help readability when references are numerous.

You can find my experiment at

gopher://ageinghacker.net

and

gemini://ageinghacker.net

, and my crude script attached to this message.

Now, it is possible to obtain a better conversion by spending more

effort: in particular lynx (which of course was never designed for this

task) is inadequate in preserving markup information. It is possible to

parse HTML instead, and start from an AST. On the other hand some fault

lies in the HTML source document as well: The document could have used,

for example, CSS for icons instead of <img> elements when the content

was not significant enough to deserve translation. However some style

information only encoded in CSS would be significant for translation:

had I used CSS in the place of old-style <tt> elements, recognising

“code”-type elements would have been an issue.

My html-to-gemini or html-to-gopher conversion would need a lot of the

complexity I want to avoid.

I have come to believe that the only really practical solution is

translating in the opposite direction: starting from a simple and clean

markup (I would say Gemini) and from that generating other simple

markups (Gopher) and the legacy system (HTML). This can and should

handle relative, intra-server links.

--

Luca Saiu -- http://ageinghacker.net

I support everyone's freedom of mocking any opinion or belief, no

matter how deeply held, with open disrespect and the same unrelented

enthusiasm of a toddler who has just learned the word "poo".

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Related

Children:

Re: Simple conversions from HTML to simple markups are disappointing (by rtr <rtr@nospam.invalid> on Sun, 23 Jan 2022 20:37:50 +0800)

Re: Simple conversions from HTML to simple markups are disappointing (by bunburya <bunburya@tilde.club> on Sun, 23 Jan 2022 14:03:27 +0000)

Re: Simple conversions from HTML to simple markups are disappointing (by meff <email@example.com> on Sun, 23 Jan 2022 20:02:52 -0000 (UTC))