Re: [BUG/RFH] gitweb: Trouble with ref markers being hyperlinks because of illegally nested links

["Giuseppe Bilotta" <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 8:15 PM, Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:
> Commit 4afbaef by Giuseppe Bilotta (gitweb: ref markers link to named
> shortlogs) turned ref markers for tags and heads into links to
> appropriate views for the ref name.
>
> Unfortunately the code didn't take into account the fact that nesting
> links (A elements) is illegal in (X)HTML:
>
>  12.2.2 Nested links are illegal
>
>  Links and anchors defined by the A element must not be nested;
>  an A element must not contain any other A elements.
>
> (from http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#h-12.2.2), and that
> some browsers (e.g. Mozilla 1.17.2 I still use) in the very strict
> conformance mode (application/xhtml+xml mimetype and XML + XHTML DTD)
> _enforce_ this requirement by moving inner link immediately outside the
> end of outer link, i.e. for the HTML source looking like the following
>  <a ...> some text <a ...>v1.5.1</a></a>
> rendered HTML (which you can see using "View Selection Source") is
> instead
>  <a ...> some text </a><a ...>v1.5.1</a>
> And of course SPAN elements which wraps inner link (inner A element) is
> _not_ moved.
>
>
> This is quite easy to fix for hyperlinked ref markers in 'shortlog' and
> 'history' views: just close the "title" hyperlink before printing
> $extra, i.e. ref markers. I have even made a patch doing that. Then
> instead of incorrect
>  _Merge branch into maint_ [] _maint_
> where _aaa_ means that 'aaa' is hyperlink, and [xxx] is a fer marker,
> we will have correct:
>  _Merge branch into maint_ [_maint_]
> See that we have two separate and not nested links...

I've seen from the list that you already have patches ready to fix at
least this problem. I think we might start from having these patches
in while we think of the best way to fix the biggest issue:

> What is more complicated is the issue of ref marker from
> git_print_header_div e.g. in 'commit'/'commitdiff' view, and in 'log'
> view.  There link is made into block element using "display: block;"
> CSS rule (div.title, a.title), so that you can click _anywhere_ on the
> header block.  This breaks layout even worse, making hyperlinked ref
> marker text appear *below* header div:
>
>  -----------------------------------------------------------
>  |_Merge branch into maint_ []                             |
>  -----------------------------------------------------------
>  _maint_
>
> To preserve current layout and behavior it would be needed to do some
> deep HTML + CSS positioning hackery, perhaps with additional link block
> without any text... But I don't know exactly how to do this; all [few]
> experiments I did failed.
>
> I see possible the following alternate solutions:
>  * Ignore this issue (e.g. if it does not affect modern browsers)

That would be my current choice until we find a better solution.

>  * Revert 4afbaef (we lose feature, but how often used is it?)
>  * Always use quirks mode, or check browser and use quirks mode if it
>   would break layout
>  * Use extra divs and links and CSS positioning to make layout which
>   looks like current one, and behaves as current one, but is more
>   complicated.

I'm asking on #html, hopefully I'll get some interesting idea to try for this.

-- 
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta