Subject: Re: Alpha FAQ (was Re: post-installation oddity on AlphaPC164SX)
To: None <port-alpha@netbsd.org>
From: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
List: port-alpha
Date: 05/20/1999 11:09:35
I got private email about the Alpha FAQ, saying

> The whole page shows for me -- netscape browser, no proxy.
> Try shift-reload?  view source?

Prompted by this, I fetched the page "by hand" and inspected the
resulting file.

The problem is broken comments.  Most of the contents are commented
out, and netscape's comment parsing is..lenient? broken? enough for the
content to show anyway.

| <!-- Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999
| 	The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. -->

This is a valid comment.

| <!-- THIS FILE GENERATED FROM 'faq.list'.
|      DO _NOT_ EDIT THIS FILE DIRECTLY - EDIT 'faq.list' AND RUN 'make'.
|      -->

So is this.

| [list of questions]
| 
| 
| <!-------------------------------------------------------------->

This is not the comment it is obviously intended to be.  Whoever wrote
this needs to read up on how HTML comments work.  Each "--" within a
<!...> toggles the "in comment" state.  There are 62 dashes there; this
means there are 31 "--" pairs.  This means there are 15 copies of
"begin-comment" "end-comment", with a final trailing "begin-comment".
Then the > occurs, which means that "--" is no longer special - but
note that it closed in the "in-comment" state.  Thus, everything is
commented out until the next time "--" occurs within <!...>.  This
makes everything before the "Compiling" section vanish; another,
similar, line occurs there:

| <!-------------------------------------------------------------->

This is another line with 62 dashes.  This is 31 copies of
"end-comment" "begin-comment", with a final trailing "end-comment".
Thus, stuff starts showing again, and I see all the "Compiling"
questions and answers.

Just before the "Misc" Q&A is another such line; then there's another
one just before the footer.

This explains everything except how these incorrect comments got there,
and that, I'll leave up to the people who maintain the NetBSD website.

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
		     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B