ocamldoc generates invalid html for object types in parameter lists, type parameters

[wiml]

ocamldoc does not HTML-escape the left angle bracket (< → <) when emitting documentation for object types in some circumstances, resulting in invalid HTML.

For example both of these declarations exhibit the problem:

val foo : int -> < bah : int -> int >

type  'a thing = < bar : ( < baz : int; .. > as 'a ); >

The problem doesn't seem to happen when generating html docs in a single shot, but these commands will demonstrate the problem if the above declarations are in foo.mli:

ocamldoc -dump foo.odoc -colorize-code foo.mli
mkdir -p somedocs
ocamldoc -load foo.odoc -colorize-code -html -d somedocs

[Octachron]

I don't see any difference between the html files generated directly with

ocamldoc foo.mli -html -colorize-code

and the one generated indirectly.

As far as I can see, the html backend only escapes < and > in the specialized path for the toplevel of a type declaration and not for generic type expressions.

[github-actions]

This issue has been open one year with no activity. Consequently, it is being marked with the "stale" label. What this means is that the issue will be automatically closed in 30 days unless more comments are added or the "stale" label is removed. Comments that provide new information on the issue are especially welcome: is it still reproducible? did it appear in other contexts? how critical is it? etc.

[gasche]

@Octachron do you think this is an issue worth fixing, or should we decide to close as ocamldoc is on life support?

[Octachron]

I would say that the bug is sufficiently limited in scope to try to fix it. I will have a look.