Tidys replacement of empty P effects rendering

Hi,

Given HTML Code:

<BODY>
<P>text</P>
<P>
<PRE>some pre text</PRE>

<P>text</P>
<P>
<UL>
<LI>list item
</UL>

</BODY>

   Former Versions (e.g. 26Jul) of HTML Tidy trimmed the 'empty' P element
what effected the rendering in LYNX (http://lynx.browser.org) (there is no
empty line between the paragraphs and the PRE text (or the list) as it were
when adding the <P>).

   The 27Sep Version of Tidy now replaces the <P> with <BR> what effects
rendering in other browsers like MSIE or Netscape Navigator (which renderd the
empty line before). There are, using <BR>, _two_ empty line instead of one
what makes my pages type of ugly in those browsers.

    It is true that empty paragraphs should not be used (this is in the HTML
4.0 spec), but since theire use effects rendering in some browsers it's (IMHO)
wrong to remove them as it is wrong to replace them with <BR>.

   To solve this problem an option in the config file should disable the
trimming of empty Ps. By default, empty Ps should simply be trimmed. No empty
P should be replaced by <BR> since this effects rendering 'dramatically'.



PS: in the HTML Newsgroup other people like Jukka Korpela complained about
this behaivor, too, like in MSGID <37debbdd.25691339@news.cs.hut.fi> (use
http://deja.com/forms/mid.shtml to access this article)


regards,

  Björn Höhrmann

Received on Tuesday, 19 October 1999 15:54:59 UTC