Re: Is XHTML 1.0 2nd ed. Section 4.3 really informative?

ITO Tsuyoshi <tsuyoshi@is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp> wrote:

> To me, it is natural to forbid shorthand representation such as
> ``<span />'', because HTML 4.01 parsers might regard it as the
> beginning of an element, look for the corresponding end tag and get
> confused.  Therefore, I am afraid that some statement is missing in
> the normative part of the Working Draft.

That's just an HTML compatibility issue and mentioned in an informative
Appendix C.3 [1].  If you wish to serve your XHTML 1.0 document to
HTML user agents, you SHOULD follow that guideline.  For XHTML user
agents, "<span></span>" or "<span />" must not make any difference.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-xhtml1-20011004/#C_3

Regards,
-- 
Masayasu Ishikawa / mimasa@w3.org
W3C - World Wide Web Consortium