Wrapping HTML in templates

[Christian Robottom Reis]

Jouni's giving me a hard time because I'm reluctant to wrap HTML in
templates. I'm trying to figure out what the right way to do this is; it
isn't as trivial as it seems. This may pass as ironical to people who
know me for being a strict 72-char wrapper; I just don't think this rule
applies very well to the whitespace-intolerant nature of HTML, in
particular, HTML links.

So here's a public cry for help that others may enjoy as well:

    a) How does one wrap a long link which isn't broken by template
       statements?

        <p><a href=query.cgi>Skip all this nonsense, and go back to the query page</a>\n";

    b) How does one wrap a long link which *is* broken by template
       statements?

       <a href="[% INCLUDE diffurl attachid=attachid %]&headers=[% headers FILTER html %]&context=file">File</a> / 

    c) How does one wrap a long HTML statement that includes <a> tags
       (and therefore doesn't like spurious spacing here and there) such
       as:

       <table class="file_table"><thead><tr><td class="file_head" colspan="2"><a href="#" onclick="return twisty_click(this)">[% collapsed ? '(+)' : '(-)' %]</a><input type="checkbox" name="[% file.filename FILTER html %]"[% collapsed ? '' : ' checked' %] style="display: none"> 

Yes, this last one is horrible. Yes, parts of it could be broken into
separate lines. The question is: is it worth it if parts of it won't be
wrappable anyway? Here's a try:
       
       <table class="file_table">
         <thead>
           <tr>
             <td class="file_head" colspan="2"><a href="#" onclick="return twisty_click(this)">[% collapsed ? '(+)' : '(-)' %]</a><input type="checkbox" name="[% file.filename FILTER html %]"[% collapsed ? '' : ' checked' %] style="display: none"> 
             [...]
             </td>
           </td>
         </thead>
        </table>

Is it really that much better? 

I've tended to use the policy: if a large portion of the line isn't
wrappable, don't bother with wrapping smaller parts of it unless it
makes things a lot better. Is that a bad policy?

Note that one alternative is wrapping *inside* tags and TT statements.
Something like unfolding the above td into:
             
         <td class="file_head" colspan="2"><a href="#" 
            onclick="return twisty_click(this)">[% 
                collapsed ? '(+)' : '(-)' %]</a><input 
                    type="checkbox" name="[% file.filename FILTER html %]"[% 
                         collapsed ? '' : ' checked' %] style="display: none"> 

I really think that's evil and makes the code much harder to follow, but
I may be convinced otherwise. Note that we can't simply break around the
<a> because the link text expands to cover whitespace in many cases.

Nothing convinces me that wrapping HTML makes it easier to read so far.

I'd be really happy if some consensus is reached; I'm really not a
newbie to Bugzilla or to development, and I don't know what to do in
most of these cases (that is, if I'm actually doing something wrong
<wink>), so it's probable that either I'm being clueless or it's really
not such a trivial matter.

Take care,
--
Christian Robottom Reis | http://async.com.br/~kiko/ | [+55 16] 3361 2331