transforming xhtml attributes

[Chris Dornan]

Folks,
 
I am proposing to extend the xhtml package slightly to better support
attribute munging.
 
Currently you would use (!) to add a bunch of attributes to an element,
thus:
 
                b1 = button noHtml ! [name "go", value "go"]
 
The problem, as pointed out by mistuke[1]  is that there is no way to safely
add attributes as this could result in an attribute being bound ambiguously
and illegally [2] thus:
 
                b2 = b1 ! [value "oops"]
 
Apparently this can lead Haddock to generate illegal (X)HTML [1].
 
My proposed solution is to add a new CHANGEATTRS class with the overloaded
function:
 
                changeAttrs :: CHANGEATTRS a => a -> ([HtmlAttr] ->
[HtmlAttr]) -> a
 
and to export a function for analysing the (abstract) HtmlAttr type:
 
                htmlAttrPair :: HtmlAttr -> (String, String)
 
CHANGEATTRS/changeAttrs/htmlAttrPair works just like ADDATTRS/(!) except
that the attributes can be analysed and transformed. 
 
                extend_name :: Html -> Html
                extend_name h = h `changeAttrs` map f
                      where
                        f a  = case htmlAttrPair a of
                                 ("name",nm) -> name $ "foo_" ++ nm
                                 _           -> a
 
Finally, I have an embarrassing confession to make -- I forgot that I should
be getting the changes reviewed here -- even for such a modest widening of
the API -- and have already put out
3000.2.1 with these additions onto Hackage!
 
Comments and feedback welcome though,
 
Chris
 
[1] https://github.com/haskell/xhtml/issues/2
[2] http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20-TECHS/H94.html
 
 
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