On Thu, 2025-01-16 at 22:58 +0800, Gerald Pfeifer wrote: > On Wed, 15 Jan 2025, David Malcolm wrote: > > The heading elements in our website contain "id" information, > > but currently to find them you to look at the page source, > > whereas in the generated HTML for the manual we have e.g.: > > > > <a class="copiable-link" href="#index-mabi-1"> ¶</a> > > > > which shows up nicely in the browser in e.g. > > https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/ARM-Options.html > : > > It's *very* helpful to have easily shareable links to within pages. > > Absolutely agreed. > > > I've never managed to build MetaHTML and have always just crossed > > my > > fingers and hoped when making edits to the GCC website; > > bin/preprocess > > just errors out for me immediately due to not finding mhc. > > Yes, sadly the GNU project let MetaHTML die (though I raised this > more > than once). I still think the concept as such was fine and it served > us > well over the years, but building has been challenging 20 years ago > and > would require some fierce source code editing nowadays. :-( > > > So this patch as written replaces the invocation of mhc with an > > invocation of the python script, which of course drops various > > features. > > Yeah! I was hoping we could return to your script. IIRC I once pinged > and > you were busy; happy to collaborate on finishing this up. > > In any case, a few years ago I spent quite some time and effort to > prepare > the stage, migrating the site to CSS (done) and making individual > pages > self contained (also done), which removed most of the original > MetaHTML > usage. > > This is why things appear somewhat fine, even without MetaHTML > available. > > > and, for now, the loss of the mhc stuff here: > > https://dmalcolm.fedorapeople.org/gcc/2025-01-15/htdocs/ > > > > compared to: > > https://gcc.gnu.org/ > > So it appears the two biggest losses are > (1) the default footer on every page, and > (2) the navigation bar on the main page? > Plus > (3) loss of favicon.ico on every page, > (4) postprocessing of /install docs, > (5) no longer adding "- GNU Project" to every page title. > > Anything else you are aware of? > > > Gerald: if you have mhc working, can you please try adjusting the > > bin/ so it runs *both*. mhc and the python script. > > I have a 32-bit x86 build on a local machine which probably is 20+ > years > old, plus a comparable, though not identical, build on gcc.gnu.org. > > Building newly is something I tried a while ago and gave up. Not > infeasible when one patches out code we don't need to some non- > standard > things, but painful and not worth it. > > (I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by the above, i.e., what you'd > like > to see adjusted?)
Sorry for being unclear. What I mean is that I think it's possible to run *both* mhc and my script on the input files (my script takes a file, rather than stdin, so it can't be done directly in a shell pipeline though). But I don't have a working mhc so I can't test that; you do, so I was hoping you could hack up preprocess so it runs both. Alternatively I can try to write a version of the patch that does that (but I can't test it locally). I'd love to get rid of metahtml, but for now I just want easily copyable links for the gcc 15 "changes" and porting guide. > > > --- a/bin/preprocess > > +++ b/bin/preprocess > > @@ -33,8 +33,6 @@ > > # > > # By Gerald Pfeifer <pfei...@dbai.tuwien.ac.at> 1999-12-29. > ^^^^^^^^^^ > Well, talking about old code! Back then MetaHTML built fine IIRC on > your > average GNU/Linux distribution. :-/ > > > How do we best take it from there? > > I believe at this point, and with MetaHTML unrecoverably dead for 10+ > years, and my website rework there isn't dramatically much left we're > missing. > > htdocs/style.mhtml actually tells us what, the two bigger items being > (1) > default footer and (2) navigation bar on the main page as listed > above. > > (The BACKPATH code in style.mhtmlwas used for the GCJ main page, > which is > gone now. Of course it would be nice to have navigation on every > page, but > that's an enhancement, not a regression to avoid.) > > > With those two addressed, and (3) possibly later on, I think we > should > bite the bullet, rip of the bandaid, plunge into the cold water, > whatever > idiom we want to use. :-) > > > How can we tackle those? > > Maybe some "macros", best HTML comments that insert text or include a > text > file from a magic subdirectory? We could use that for the navigation > aspect. > > And some "include this text before </body> in every single document" > magic for the default footer? > > (Disclaimer: these are just some ideas. There may be vastly better > ways.) If we're going that way, can we simply use a well-known Python templating system, such as Jinja: https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/en/stable/ or just migrate to a well-known static site generator. I looked for ones implemented in Python and found Pelican: https://getpelican.com/ but I'm not a web developer. Maybe Arsen has some suggestions? But for now, I'm hoping to get the fix for links in; please let me know if you want me to try another version of the patch. Dave
