On Wed, 5 Mar 2025 18:07:11 GMT, Jonathan Gibbons <j...@openjdk.org> wrote:
>> Please review an enhancement to make `DocCommentParser` normalize whitespace
>> inside `<pre>` elements. The normalization is conceptually simple and and
>> intended to be minimally invasive. Before parsing, `DocCommentParser` checks
>> whether the text is a traditional doc comment and whether every line starts
>> with a space character, which is commonly the case in traditional doc
>> comments. If so, a single leading space is removed in block content (top
>> level text and `{@code}`/`{@literal}` tags) when parsing within HTML `<pre>`
>> tags.
>>
>> This fixes the incidental one-space indentation in the vast majority of JDK
>> code samples using `<pre>` alone or in combination with `<code>` or
>> `{@code}`. In fact, I only found one code sample in JDK code that isn't
>> solved by this change, for which I included a fix in this PR (it's in
>> `String.startsWith(String, int)`, where I replaced the 10 char indentation
>> and trailing line with a `<blockquote>`).
>>
>> The many added `boolean inBlockContent` arguments pased around in
>> `DocCommentParser` are to make sure the removal is not applied to multiline
>> inline content, which is maybe a bit fussy considering there is not a lot of
>> multiline inline content in `<pre>` tags and it usually would not mind about
>> removal of a non-essential space character, but I wanted to keep the change
>> minimal. There are few javadoc tests that had to be adapted, most of the
>> testing is done in `test/langtools/tools/javac/doctree`.
>>
>> If the exact number of leading whitespace in `<pre>` tags is important to
>> any javadoc user the old output can be restored by increasing the
>> indentation by 1. There will be a release note for this of course.
>>
>> Unfortunately, there is another whitespace problem that can't be solved as
>> easily, and that is a leading blank line caused by `<pre><code>\n` open
>> tags. Browsers will [ignore a newline immediately following a `<pre>`
>> tag][1], but not if there is a `<code>` tag in between. There are hundreds
>> of occurrences of this in JDK code, including variants with space characters
>> mixed in. The fix in javadoc proper would be too complex, so I decided to
>> solve it with 3 lines of JavaScript and a regex to reverse the order of
>> `<code>\n` at the beginning of `<pre>` tags while removing any intermediary
>> space. Script operation is indiscernible and it solves the problem.
>>
>> [1]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/#the-pre-element:the-pre-element
>
> As you indicated, there are two problems being addressed here, which might
> indicate the need for two separate patches. These issues are:
>
> 1. The leading 1-space problem.
> 2. The trailing newline-after-<pre> problem
>
> For the first, it is unduly hard work to fix this just for `<pre>` blocks. I
> still think that an overall better long-term solution would be to apply a
> conceptual `stripIndent` to the entire doc comment. This would bring
> traditional comments into line with the new Markdown comments, and can be
> done in just a few lines in `DocCommentParser`, and doing it there in DCP
> means you need not update `Elements.getDocComment`. If nothing else, I would
> suggest doing the experiment and comparing the generated docs, to verify
> there are no unexpected side effects. If there are any significant unexpected
> side effects, then your approach might deserve a second look. You could also
> make this a JDK-version-specific change if you wanted: meaning the new
> behavior does not apply to older JDK versions, although that is not a policy
> we have adhered to in the past.
>
> For the second, I just feel that is a step too far, using JavaScript to clean
> up what some might consider to be bad input. Authors should either write HTML
> according to the HTML (and CSS?) specs, so that `javadoc` is just a
> "pass-through" layer, or authors should use a suitable construct, like
> `{@snippet...}`, that is "pleasing" to look at in source form while still
> generating the desired output.
After discussion with @jonathan-gibbons we have agreed that the two issues in
this PR should be handled separately.
-------------
PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/23868#issuecomment-2722311586
