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So, Markaby is so magical it hurts, right? Well, you’ll be glad to hear that Markaby is getting a big dose of more magic! It’s our magic-permeation branch (aka xhtml-careful.)

 http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/svn/markaby/branches/xhtml-careful/

Markaby has two big problems that really get in the way. The biggest problem is method_missing. Solution forthcoming. The second problem is helper methods in Rails.

 link_to "Total is: #{number_to_human_size @file_bytes}",
 :action => 'more_totals'

In current Markaby, the above won’t work. The link_to method and the number_to_human_size are both helpers methods. Markaby, by default, prefers to print out helper methods. So you’ll end up with:

 10K
 <a href="http://redhanded.hobix.com/c/more_totals">Total is: 10K</a>

But we want to print one out and we want to get the other back as a string. (In ERB, you differentiate with <% and <%=.) So to get the bytes back as a string:

 link_to "Total is: #{@helpers.number_to_human_size @file_bytes}",
 :action => 'more_totals'

By calling the @helpers var, you call the method directly and Markaby can’t intercept. However, in the saturated-with-magic branch, we’ve hooked the to_str for fragments of HTML. This means that we can tell when you’re using a helper like a string. And things get handled right. So, now you can do:

 link_to "Total is: #{number_to_human_size @file_bytes}",
 :action => 'more_totals'

In a couple days, we’ll talk about the solution to our method_missing problems and you can help decide if the extra voodoo is paying off.

Oh, and this also means that this will work:
div { h1 { "Welcome to #{strong 'RedHanded'}" } }