Re: [w3c/webcomponents] Custom 'void' or self-closing elements (HTML parser changes) (#624)

I think this is a perfect illustration of why some of HTML5's specs are grandiosely bad.

Specifying that some specific elements may be void or self-closing is objectively stupid. It makes parsing more difficult, it is confusing for authors and the benefit is minuscule and a matter of taste.

If HTML had left self-closing tags as transparent equivalent to empty tags, this issue would be non-existent and there is practically no penalty at all for the parser and users who like closing elements can continue to use them.

Void elements have a small benefit for authors using vi and make parsing difficult. For backward compatibility, they should have been deprecated. 

These bad decisions (along with removing namespaces in some places and keeping them elsewhere) will keep haunting us for many decades.

I don't think that it is really important that custom elements can specify how they should be parsed, but I think it is important that custom element do not have to specify that. 

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