All the code from the built-in HTML code generator that I have seen has been terrible HTML code – all uppercase attribute names, non XHTML compliant options, and I don’t see how I can specify CSS classes for tags. It’s all very outdated.
I’m not really impressed with how this whole thing works at all, but if I can at least get it to generate valid XHTML Transitional code with full control over CSS, it would be a small improvement.
How do I change all that? Is there something I can edit to change the HTML code that RomPager (is that the responsible component?) generates?
– gw
Another thought – do I even have to use the HTML Comment Tags?
Could I write my own HTML and then use RpDisplayText to grab values from C to integrate into that? Something like this:
I really don’t see the value in the HTML Comment Tags, and if the above technique works, then that would be better for me in many ways.
– gw
Hmm, after studying the example code more, my attempt above at a clever workaround will be foiled by PBuilder. Apparently it even scans for non-commented strings to substitute like simple and such and will replace those with non-valid (to HTML4/XHTML1T) uppercase versions.
This is all very disappointing. My final grasp at hope is that I can bypass PBuilder completely and still get pages pushed through the web server, but that doesn’t look promising either as it appears the http server expects to find these PBuilder code files. Argh.
As you’ve found, AWS actively blocks generation of proper XHTML - its something I periodically nag Digi about. We have version 4.34 of AWS. There is a much more recent version of AWS which will produce XHTML (4 years ago Allegro were up to version 4.51), but so far Digi haven’t implemented an upgrade.
If nothing else you can probably just define a web page or two with a single RpDisplayText block, and generate your XHTML that way - however it makes it trickier handling forms and input fields.
I second your frustration. The HTML produced by the AWS is like something from the 90’s.
My number 1 request for Digi would be to update to the latest AWS version instead of using a 5 year old version.
I’ve scanned recent Allegro version documentation, and I’m not convinced it is any better. The documentation still uses all upper case HTML, and doesn’t seem to imply at all that I can add my own class or any other attributes to their commands.
So, I’m not convinced a newer version of AWS will fix this. We’ve mostly been working core functionality and CLI so far, but this month I will be diving into HTML in earnest. Hopefully I can come up with something. If I can just use CGI to bypass PBuilder stuff altogether, I’ll create my own web page framework.