jvoorhis comments on Making it better

"Making it better": comment by Johan

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 01:07:30 NZDT

Not sure here – but shouldn’t one of lang or xml:lang be picked? (depending on how it’s served; application/xml or text/html)

"Making it better": comment by Jeremy Voorhis

Sat, 3 Dec 2005 14:00:08 NZDT

I don’t like the validator buttons much myself, and wouldn’t want to impose that upon anyone. It also seems beyond the scope of what the plugin would encompass – utilities for correctly using and getting more out of html and http, but not necessarily bragging about it :)

"Making it better": comment by Chris Anderson

Sat, 3 Dec 2005 01:27:51 NZDT

This looks like a convenient plugin if there ever was one. Maybe an (optional) built-in link to the validator in the footer would discourage miss-use of the doc type declarations.

"Making it better" by jvoorhis

Fri, 2 Dec 2005 14:12:00 NZDT

It’s even easier like this:

in app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:

<%= xhtml_doctype :strict %>
<%= html_tag :lang => Globalize::Locale.active.language.iso_639_1 %>
<%= @content_for_layout %>
<%= end_html_tag %>

and in app/helpers/application_helper.rb:

module ApplicationHelper
  # Renders an xhtml doctype declaration for the document's prolog. Defaults to xhtml transitional.
  # <tt>xhtml_doctype :strict</tt>
  def xhtml_doctype( doctype=:transitional )
    doctype = :transitional unless [:transitional, :strict, :frameset].include? doctype
    case doctype
    when :transitional
      '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">'
    when :strict
      '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">'
    when :frameset
      '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">'
    end
  end

  # Displays an html tag, complete with xhtml namespace and language. Accepts language as an option, but defaults to English.
  # <tt>html_tag :lang => 'de'</tt>
  def html_tag( options={} )
    options[:lang] ||= 'en'
    lang = options.delete( :lang )
    "<html xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml\" lang=\"#{lang}\" xml:lang=\"#{lang}\" #{options.map { |k,v| "#{k}=\"#{v}\"" }.join( ' ' )}>" 
  end

  # End html tag.
  def end_html_tag; "</html>" end
end

I plan to release this and some other small http/html-related gems as a plugin soon, so keep an eye out.