Re: FAQ about reasons behind CSS

Mikko Rantalainen:
> I consider colspan and rowspan as premature optimization. If you're 
> afraid of extra bytes to transfer, just apply compression. Reduntant 
> strings can be easily compressed.

'rowspan' and 'colspan' *are* a kind of (2D RLE) compression, which 
could easily be decompressed (at least in the case of 'colspan') if 
needed, but they additionally express connectiveness.

> Any closing tag could be easily replaced with </> because it's clear
> in XHTML anyway which starting tag it should be matched with...

Yes, I never understood why it wasn't allowed (optionally) in XML. I can 
understand that other SHORTTAG features can be confusing and a little 
harder to parse and therefore were left out of XML (and thus XHTML), but 
not empty end tag (or whatever SGML actually calls it).