Command-line option to revert to pre-2.0 storing of CSS and JS as data URIs

[noamross]

As seen in #3423 and #4026, the best choice of inlining CSS and JS file vs. embedding them as data URIs differs depending on application. I was wondering if it would be possible to have a command-line flag to embed files as base64 data URIs rather than inlining.

In my case (ecohealthalliance/cites#2), script and style tags are much tougher to make work in the context of inserting HTML outputs into R documentation, where the syntax conflicts with CSS and JSS and elaborate pre-processing of lots of escape situations would be required.

[mb21]

I'm not too familiar with "R documentation", but shouldn't you always escape things properly anyway?

[jgm]

@noamross is talking about the behavior of --self-contained, I assume.

[noamross]

@jgm Yes, that's correct.

@mb21 Of course. I may be able to pull it off, but I'm not sure the R documentation format, and the packages that auto-generate it from comments, can quite handle all layered nesting of escapes required. Based on the previous issues I would guess there are other conditions where having base64 is easier to handle.

[oloverm]

I'd also like this, just because it's easier to debug CSS in Chrome the old way than it is now. It's the difference between it letting you edit CSS as a separate file, or only in the context of a long parent HTML.

[jgm]

I see the point of this. Maybe something like --always-data-uris?