[TxMt] Re: Web preview and root-relative paths

[Rob McBroom]

On 2009-Apr-16, at 12:34 AM, Gianni wrote:

> In my html files I use root-relative paths such as:
> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/screen.css" type="text/css" />

It's all about the context. When loaded from a web server, a browser  
will interpret this as relative the the server's DocumentRoot. When  
loaded from a local file, the browser will interpret this as relative  
to the root of your file system.

You would get conflicting results either way. For instance, if you had  
a file at "/files/index.html" and it referenced "/files/style.css", it  
would work when loaded from a web server. But if the browser assumed  
that paths in local files beginning with '/' should be relative to the  
current document's parent directory, then the above reference would be  
interpreted as "/files/files/style.css".

In other words, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

> The Web Preview does not work even though the path is also relative to
> the top level of the project, I have to use paths relative to the
> current document.
> <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/screen.css" type="text/css" />

This works everywhere because it is truly relative. I would switch to  
this method wherever possible… which is not always practical.  
Honestly, my "preview" is to upload to a web server and reload the  
page in my browser. As an alternative, don't forget that your computer  
has a web server already installed on it. With a little setup, you  
could preview things by connecting to <http://localhost/>.

> Is there some way to get Web Preview to work with root-relative paths
> for html development?

There are variables you can set for a project, like  
TM_PROJECT_SITEURL. I'm not sure where such variables are documented  
or if they affect the behavior of the Web Preview, but perhaps there's  
something similar that can tell the Web Preview to insert a path  
before links beginning with '/'.

-- 
Rob McBroom
<http://www.skurfer.com/>