base href fun!

VLSmooth · Post by **VLSmooth** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 6:00 pm

I've been recently fiddling with the base href html tag to eliminate repetitiveness, especially with external links. Too bad it single-handedly destroys portability. Or does it?

The question is, can a base href be undone? So far, My only hack for it is to <base href="."> when I want relative links again, but that still prepends a stupid "http://./" to all affected links. Bleh.

Post by **Jonathan** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 7:12 pm

answer: how many repetitive outside links do you have, anyway?

VLSmooth · Post by **VLSmooth** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 8:30 pm

Quite a few, since my design spans three components, each of which are kept in a different directory tree. I'm sticking with huge a href's since I don't want to mess with it. It just annoys me that justifying/wrapping to 80 characters (I use alt-q) is often jagged with long links.

VLSmooth · Post by **VLSmooth** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 8:34 pm

Some quickies:

Yes, I write all of my HTML in xemacs (with a modified HTML environment).

Yes, I tried Mozilla Composer, which still added crap I didn't want.

No, we don't have dreamweaver licenses, which are ~$900 a pop.

Yes, I tried various shareware editors, none of which have the indenting goodness of xemacs.

No, I don't use MS Word, Publisher, or that ilk. Heck, I even avoid notepad thanks to the annoying carriage return differences between unix and windows.

Yes, people have modified my peer reviews in word before.

Yes, it is a pain to fix the HTML afterwards.

Whee!

Post by **Jonathan** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 9:12 pm

uh, i think your option is to suck it up.

unless you're doing a goopy interface on your site, you don't want a wysiwyg editor, anyhow.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 9:12 pm

I'm thinking that you might be saved with some java script... You could just make a function that takes an argument describing the destination and points to the location you want. You can even use variables for the common parts of the paths so you don't have to repeatedly type them.

VLSmooth · Post by **VLSmooth** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 11:49 pm

Heh, sounds frighteningly like an earlier idea I had:

1) Write code with custom tags
2) Replace custom tags with approriate tags via perl

In other words, write in a new language of my own design and create a converter/compiler for HTML.

Still tempted to try that... or CSS. Then again, I have to be careful since various people use IE, Mozilla, and Netscape here.

Post by **Jonathan** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 11:50 pm

glish.com

alistapart.com

bluerobot.com

VLSmooth · Post by **VLSmooth** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 11:51 pm

Argh, make them links. You're attempting to defy the natural order of laziness -_-