Allow limited HTML (or new description_html field) for item descriptions

[krzysztofsaja]

Hi Landscape2 team,

I’m exploring using Landscape2 as a lightweight offering catalog for custom internal services. A current limitation is the inability to render a custom call-to-action (e.g., a button) in item descriptions.

Context

• In data.yml, item.description is a plain string per schema (references/landscape2/data.schema.json). There’s no explicit support for HTML content.
• For security reasons, I assume the UI sanitizes or escapes rich content in item fields.

Proposal
I’d like to discuss adding support for limited HTML in item descriptions to enable simple CTAs, either by:

1. Allowing a safe subset of HTML in description, sanitized at render time, or
2. Introducing a new optional field, description_html, that:
   • Accepts sanitized HTML
   • Renders only in the item details panel
   • Falls back to description when not present

Example (option 2)

categories:
  - name: Services
    subcategories:
      - name: Internal Services
        items:
          - name: Data Processing Service
            homepage_url: https://example.com
            logo: service.svg
            description: High-throughput data processing service for analytics.
            description_html: |
              <p>High-throughput data processing service for analytics.</p>
              <p>
                <a class="btn btn-primary" href="https://example.com/portal" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
                  Open Service Portal
                </a>
              </p>

Questions

• Would enabling sanitized HTML in description or supporting a new description_html field be acceptable for the project?
• If so, is there a preferred approach (extend description vs. new field)?
• Any guidance on the sanitizer/library and allowed tags/attributes you’d be comfortable with? For example:
  • Allow basic tags (p, a, strong, em, ul/ol/li, code)
  • Restrict attributes (href with https/http, rel=”noopener”, target=”_blank”)
  • Explicitly disallow inline scripts, styles, event handlers

Use case

• We want Landscape2 to serve as an offering catalog for custom services in a project I’m involved in: Phase 4 AI (https://www.phase4ai-project.eu)
• A small CTA (button-like link) in the item details greatly improves usability for our internal users.

Backward compatibility

• Keep description behavior unchanged.
• Only render description_html when present; otherwise display description.
• Validate and sanitize description_html at render time.

Willing to contribute

• I’m happy to open a PR:
  • Schema change (data.schema.json)
  • UI rendering with sanitation (React) and tests
  • Docs updates (docs/config/data.yml, docs site)
• Please advise on preferred approach before I start.

Thanks for considering!

[tegioz]

Hi @krzysztofsaja 👋

Thank you for the detailed proposal!

We've discussed this before and we'd prefer to keep the description field as plain text.

Landscape items descriptions are meant to be concise, as they are displayed in a few places, sometimes with very limited space. So we'd rather not to encourage users to add longer/rich texts. In addition to that, we'd also like to maintain a unified visual style across all items in the landscape, without any custom additions.

Not sure if it would help in your case, but there is an option to display some links below the description using other links. It would look like this: