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#+TITLE: ADR-4: HTML strip strategy
#+DATE: 2026-04-30
#+STATUS: Accepted
* Context
Wiktionary's REST API returns definition text with HTML markup —
=<span>= wrappers, =<a>= anchors, transclusion markers, occasional
inline =<i>= and =<b>=. The package needs plain text in the saved
glossary entry. The strip strategy must be robust on real responses
(not toy inputs) and shouldn't add a heavyweight dependency.
* Decision
Strip via =libxml-parse-html-region=. Take the parsed tree, recurse
through it collecting text nodes, drop everything else. No
preservation of inline formatting (italic, bold, links).
If the running Emacs wasn't built with libxml2, online fetching is
disabled package-wide for the session with a one-shot user-error.
Manual =gloss-add= still works without libxml.
* Consequences
*Positive.*
- Robust on edge cases — nested tags, malformed HTML, unusual
attributes. The libxml parser handles all of these.
- libxml2 is standard on Linux and macOS; ships with most Emacs
builds. The "missing libxml" path is real but rare.
- ~30 lines of strip code. Maintainable.
*Negative.*
- Loses italic/bold/link formatting from definitions. The saved
entry is plain text only. v1 trades fidelity for simplicity.
- A user on a barebones Emacs build (no libxml2) loses online
fetching entirely. The error message tells them why and what to
do, but it's still a hit.
* Alternatives Considered
*Regex strip* — pattern-replace =<[^>]+>= and known HTML entities.
Rejected: misses entities the regex didn't anticipate, breaks on
attributes containing =>=, fights when tags are malformed. Looks
simpler but rots fast.
*Preserve markdown-style inline formatting* — italic → =/.../=, bold
→ =*...*=. Rejected for v1: scope creep on a personal package.
Defensible v1.1 if requested.
*=shr-render-region=.* Rejected: shr is a renderer, not a stripper.
It produces text-with-faces meant for display, not text for
storage. Wrong shape for the use case.
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