Re: B.10 Empty elements?

At 22:38 14/10/96 EDT, lee@sq.com wrote:
>> Get ready to answer this same question a few hundred times 
>> a year.  No matter how we explain it, the <e></e> looks redundant 
>> for an EMPTY element and a lot of SGML hackers are taught not to 
>> do it.  It will be a tough habit to break because from the 
>> author's perspective, not the parser programmer, it looks like 
>> YetAnotherReasonSGMLIsUgly.
>
>Which is why I prefer something like
><e.br>
>or
><@br>
>both of which are either legal with RCS or can be made legal with a
>small change to the SGML declaration.

Another variation on this theme is to require empty elements to be written as

<foo/>

From the SGML point of view we would be making the NET delimiter "/>" and
requiring the start-tags of all empty elements to be net-enabling
start-tags.  In SGML '97 this could be a distinct delimiter.

James

Received on Tuesday, 15 October 1996 10:04:13 UTC