Please, look that the snippet of code below.

As you can see, the contents of an html file is being echo'd:


PHP Code:
class statichtmlViewstatichtml extends JView
{
   function display($tpl = null){
                                :
                                :
                                :
      if ( $htmlFile ){

         $fileContents = @file_get_contents($htmlFile);

         if ( !empty($fileContents) ){

            $contents = $fileContents;
            
            $source_path = dirname($htmlFile);

            //set the current directory to the html file's directory
            $chng = chdir($source_path);

            echo $contents;
         }
      } 
Note, the following line found in the code above changes the current directory to the directory that contains the static html file:

$chng = chdir($source_path);

The line above is moving the 'current dirctory' to the following:

C:\Programs\Tools\PHP\XAMPP\htdocs\joomla_development\Production\PHPXref_Framework\libraries\joomla

Again, that's where the html document referenced in the variable, $htmlFile, is actually stored:

C:\Programs\Tools\PHP\XAMPP\htdocs\joomla_development\Production\PHPXref_Framework\libraries\joomla\factory.php.source.html

$contents = JComponentHelper::renderComponent($component);

What comes out of the above variable, $contents, is the following:

HTML Code:
<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>PHPXRef 0.7 : Joomla! Framework : /libraries/joomla/factory.php source</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="../../sample.css" type="text/css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="../../sample-print.css" type="text/css" media="print">
<style id="hilight" type="text/css"></style>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#801800" vlink="#300540" alink="#ffffff">
<table class="pagetitle" width="100%">
<tr>
<td valign="top" class="pagetitle">
[ <a href="../../index.html">Index</a> ]
</td>
</td>
<td align="right" class="pagetitle">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0px">Joomla! Framework</h2>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Changing the current directory is an attempt to satisfy the 'relative' url references, href="../../, found in the html code above.

Below is the result wheb I actually run the Joomla! website the static html is displayed:
HTML Code:
<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>PHPXRef 0.7 : Joomla! Framework : /libraries/joomla/factory.php source</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/joomla_development/Production/../../sample.css" type="text/css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/joomla_development/Production/../../sample-print.css" type="text/css" media="print">
<style id="hilight" type="text/css"></style>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#801800" vlink="#300540" alink="#ffffff">

<table class="pagetitle" width="100%">
<tr>
<td valign="top" class="pagetitle">
[ <a href="/joomla_development/Production/../../index.html">Index</a> ]
</td>
<td align="right" class="pagetitle">
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0px">Joomla! Framework</h2>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
As you can see, it makes an effort to resolve the URL 'relative' references and changes them to the following:

href="/joomla_development/Production/../../

As a result, the CSS references and Anchor elements are all wrong the so the page doesn't work when clicking on links, and the layout is just plain ugly!

But it is close....all I need to do is resolve the URL relative references.

I thought maybe changing to the directory that actually contains the html file would help resolve the relative URL references, but it does not.

Would I have to go through the document with preg_replace() for example and explicitly update the URL's?

You see, how Joomla! works as a CMS is that it will take the 'buffered' content (currently being echo'd from the routine you see above), it then sets the response header and echo's it all back as a response.

Now, at some point an effort is made to resolve the relative URL references but it only gets as close as prefixing the 'root directory' to the relative URL references. (i.e. href="/joomla_development/Production/../../ )

It should actually be the following:
/joomla_development/Production/PHPXref_Framework/libraries/joomla

Any ideas?

Maybe I should post this question on an 'HTML' forum??

Cheers.