indent and vertical-space issues (was With indent:yes and wrap:0, I don't want line breaks before inline elements)

[LWillms]

This is the output of tidy 5.2 with the config options "indent: yes" and "wrap: 0":
(I have cut out only the beginning of the lines via Column Mode of Ultraedit, in order not to force a line wrap...)

`       <li>                                                       
         <h2>                                                     
           Erster Abschnitt: Ware und Geld                        
         </h2>                                                    
         <ol>                                                     
           <li>                                                   
             <a href="me23_049.htm">Erstes Kapitel. Die Ware</a>  
             <ol>                                                 
               <li>                                               
                 <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_1">Die zwei Faktoren 
               </li>                                              
               <li>                                               
                 <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_2">Doppelcharakter de
               </li>                                              
               <li>                                               
                 <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3">Die Wertform oder 
                 <ol type="A">                                    
                   <li>                                           
                     <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A">Einfache, ei
                     <ol>                                         
                       <li>                                       
                         <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_1">Die be
                       </li>                                      
                       <li>                                       
                         <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_2">Die re
                         <ol type="a">                            
                           <li>                                   
                             <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_2_a">
                           </li>                                  
                           <li>                                   
                             <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_2_b">
                           </li>                                  
                         </ol>                                    
                       </li>                                      
                       <li>                                       
                         <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_3">Die äq
                       </li>                                      

and this is how I would like to look it:

  <li><h2>Erster Abschnitt: Ware und Geld</h2>                 
    <ol>                                                       
      <li><A href="me23_049.htm">Erstes Kapitel. Die Ware</A>  
        <ol>                                                   
          <li><A href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_1">Die zwei Faktoren 
          <li><A href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_2">Doppelcharakter de
          <li><A href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3">Die Wertform oder 
            <ol type=A>                                        
              <li><A href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A">Einfache, ei
                <ol>                                           
                  <li><A href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_1">Die be
                  <li><A href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_2">Die re
                    <ol type=a>                                
                      <li><A href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_2_a">
                      <li><A href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_2_b">
                    </ol>                                      
                  </li>                                        
                  <li><A href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_3">Die äq
                  <li><A href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_4">Das Ga
                </ol>                                          

This is from a table of contents to a document which spans 38 files (including this TOC file).

The same applies to the actual text pages where a typical paragraph as produced by tidy would look like this:

<p>
Looooooooooooooooooong text line - whole paragraph
</p>

whereas in my view it would look better and would be more maintainable like this:

<p>Looooooooooooooooooong text line - whole paragraph ..... </p>

To edit the text of such a paragraph, I can switch the editor to wrap mode, so that I can see the whole text in the editor window.

Is there a hidden (hidden for my eyes, that is) config option which lets me get this?
Or is this a case for a feature request?
If yes, should the way I want to have it be the default way?
Should it be alterable, with a new config option, to the way it is now, or the other way round?

I could cope with any way, but to me it seems to be more logical to have it my way...

Cheers,
L.W.

[geoffmcl]

LWillms thank you for your issue...

Yes, my preference too would be to sometimes, in some cases, have less vertical newline space, especially in lists and tables. As you suggest, keeping certain tags in a single line, especially if wrap:0, which in a way even implies this...

Some little steps were taken in this regard, and an option --vertical-space auto/no/yes, ie vertical-space, was added. Take care, the auto will eliminate nearly all vertical space, and the yes will add some additional vertical space in some cases, so this does not help this case...

And it is further complicated by the fact that adding the indent option -i also adds vertical space. I do not understand your second <p>Looong text...</p> example. Tidy does seem to keep that inline?

This has been a hot topic, mentioned in many issues. See #158, #163, #179, #189, #227, #228, and probably others...

So yes, this is a Feature Request, for Pretty Printing. If you, or others, want to present some ideas, as a PR, in a forked branch, I would certainly review, and consider it, but obviously as a new option, which should default no, at least initially... or as a level, like vertical-level:0-5, or whatever... thanks...

[LWillms]

First on my initial post - <h1> thru <h9> are, of course, not real inline elements, but they are mostly one-liner, and do typically not include other elements. So I think they should be treated as <p> or <li> or similar. I did not mention those semantical structuring tags introduced by HTML 5, like <header>, <footer>, <article>, <aside>, <section>, and also the untyped <div> -- with those, I think it would be sensible to have them in a line by itself.

As to Geoffmcl's question about the <p>, here is the output of Tidy 5.2 with target HTML5, and vertical-space=no looks like this (lines cut at column 59):

    <h3 name="Kap_FÜNFTES" id="Kap_FÜNFTES">               
      FÜNFTES KAPITEL: Ökonomie in der Anwendung des konsta
    </h3>                                                  
    <h4 class="c1" name="Kap_5_I" id="Kap_5_I">            
      I. Im allgemeinen                                    
    </h4>                                                  
    <p>                                                    
      <a class="SeiteZurueck" href="me25_080.htm#S86">&lt;<
    </p>                                                   
    <p>                                                    
      <a class="SeiteZurueck" href="#S87">&lt;</a><a class=
    </p>                                                   
    <p>                                                    
      Eine ganze Reihe laufender Unkosten bleibt sich beina
    </p>                                                   
    <p>                                                    
      "Die Betriebskosten einer Fabrik bei zehnstündiger Ar
    </p>                                                   
    <p>                                                    
      Staats- und Gemeindesteuern, Feuerversichrung, Lohn v
    </p>                                                   

I would like to see it this way:

    <h3 name="Kap_FÜNFTES" id="Kap_FÜNFTES">FÜNFTES KAPITEL: 
    <h4 class="c1" name="Kap_5_I" id="Kap_5_I">I. Im allgemei
    <p><a class="SeiteZurueck" href="me25_080.htm#S86">&lt;< 
    <p><a class="SeiteZurueck" href="#S87">&lt;</a><a class= 
    <p>Eine ganze Reihe laufender Unkosten bleibt sich beina 
    <p>"Die Betriebskosten einer Fabrik bei zehnstündiger Ar 
    <p>Staats- und Gemeindesteuern, Feuerversichrung, Lohn v 

The Tidy configuration is this:

clean: yes
indent: yes
wrap: 0
break-before-br: yes
output-html: yes
doctype: html5
input-encoding: latin1
output-encoding: utf8
output-bom: yes
new-inline-tags: math, mroot, mrow, mi, mn, mo, msqrt, mfrac, 
 msubsup, munderover, munder, mover, mmultiscripts, msup, msub, 
 mtext, mprescripts, mtable, mtr, mtd, mth

The effect of an added vertical-space: yes of the example in the initial post looks like this:

       <li>                                                        
         <h2>                                                      
           Erster Abschnitt: Ware und Geld                         
         </h2>                                                     
                                                                   
         <ol>                                                      
           <li>                                                    
             <a href="me23_049.htm">Erstes Kapitel. Die Ware</a>   
             <ol>                                                  
               <li>                                                
                 <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_1">Die zwei Faktoren d
               </li>                                               
                                                                   
               <li>                                                
                 <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_2">Doppelcharakter der
               </li>                                               
                                                                   
               <li>                                                
                 <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3">Die Wertform oder d
                 <ol type="A">                                     
                   <li>                                            
                     <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A">Einfache, ein
                     <ol>                                          
                       <li>                                        
                         <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_1">Die bei
                       </li>                                       
                                                                   
                       <li>                                        
                         <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_2">Die rel
                         <ol type="a">                             
                           <li>                                    
                             <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_2_a">G
                           </li>                                   
                                                                   
                           <li>                                    
                             <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_2_b">Q
                           </li>                                   
                         </ol>                                     
                       </li>                                       
                                                                   
                       <li>                                        
                         <a href="me23_049.htm#Kap_1_3_A_3">Die äqu
                       </li>                                       

As one can see, there is a sense of the grouping I would like to see.

[geoffmcl]

@LWillms thanks for the additional comment...

Could you please avoid truncating the lines... they become useless as sample html to test...

You do know you can drag and drop files here, and github will upload the data, and present a link pointer for downloading, so we can get the complete files for testing...

Then do the same with the current tidy output, manually re-lining them to what you would like to see... and we have a full target files to match with...

Yes, I do think I see the grouping you would like... and this can be done by modification of the pprint.c module...

All we need is some C programmer, with the time, to take on the task, and present patches or a PR... I will help where I can... thanks...

[balthisar]

I'll take this up, but only if we start a 5.5 release (5.4 should be released soon, and there are some smaller issues that can still be addressed in order to release a 5.4). I would propose breaking past behavior and redefining what TidyIndent and what TidyVertSpace do, and probably roll TidyBreakBeforePR into a new set of configuration options that give better granularity over vertical space.

• Right now TidyIndent (indent) controls a lot of vertical space on its own, and it's not possible to only indent without inducing extra wrapping. This should change.
• TidyVertSpace is a mess. The current choice of AutoBool was probably chosen because it already existed. I'd change it back to a plain bool:
  • NO gives the current behavior of AUTO, except INDENT no longer affects output in this mode. Right now AUTO will keep everything on a single line (wrapping if WRAP is on), but still adds random tabs or spaces if INDENT is on. That's not logical.
  • YES enables fine grained control will additional configuration options, but will always give space to logical things like non-empty SCRIPT, to DIV, tags defined in NEW_BLOCKLEVEL_TAGS, HR, and most other block elements. The new configuration options simply won't work unless this option is YES.
• VERTICAL-SPACE-HX, defaults to YES. If not, then headlines will be put onto one line (subject to wrapping).
• VERTICAL-SPACE-LI, defaults to YES, applies to LI.
• VERTICAL-SPACE-TR, defaults to YES
• VERTICAL-SPACE-P, defaults to YES. Some people, like @LWillms, would like to set this to NO.
• VERTICAL-SPACE-BR, is the renamed version of TidyBreakBeforeBR.
• VERTICAL-SPACE-CUSTOM, defaults to NO, because HTML5 custom elements are inline by default, but this would give users the ability to treat them like blocks for pretty-printing purposes (this is in relation to another feature request, and we don't have custom element support currently).
• Any others? It would be impractical to offer this for EVERY element. If the can be some logical grouping of tags, then we could do that instead, e.g., the way I've grouped all headlines together.

Feedback is appreciated, especially from people who depend on current behavior, because this is a current behavior breaker.

[LWillms]

Balthisar's proposals seem to be sensible for me, although it is not 100% clear what is meant by the " fine grained control" - I guess it is meant that eg VERTICAL-SPACE-HX = YES would mean that after both the <Hx> and the </Hx> would come a line feed, as it is now in 5.2, whereas with VERTICAL-SPACE-HX = NO the <Hx> and the </Hx> with the actual header in between would appear on one line, with a line feed only after the . Right? Similar with VERTICAL-SPACE-P -- its value being YES would mean that Tidy would work as today, whereas NO would result in the <P>, the </P> and the actual paragraph text in between appear on a single line, i.e. with a line feed only after the </P>. Right? If the default is YES or NO does not matter much to me when I can override the default by a configuration option.

BTW, with the TidyBreakBeforeBR I had an issue -- I tried it, and got the <BR> in front, but a line break after it -- I guess that Balthisar's proposed replacement VERTICAL-SPACE-BR would enable me to get the <BR> in front (left aligned with the text it breaks) but then followed by the rest of the text instead of a line break.

As to geoffmcl requests to upload some actual files instead of just showing the beginning of the lines. "me23_000.htm" is to replace http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me23/me23_000.htm but is not yet ready to replace it; I need to work on the CSS in order to differentiate the nesting levels not only by their indentation, but also by font, font size, weight, decoration etc. me23_033.htm is a relatively short ext (forword to the 2nd German edition). I try to upload both the intermediary version which I had produced with VB Script and regular expressions and what Tidy 5.2 made of it.

---

Tried, but it did not work.

[LWillms]

I'll try again the uploads...

It won't let me: "We don’t support that file type" -- TXT and ZIP file...