[Bug 28825] New: Should empty-element tags include a space before forward slash e.g. "<br />"?

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=28825

            Bug ID: 28825
           Summary: Should empty-element tags include a space before
                    forward slash e.g. "<br />"?
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Hardware: PC
                OS: Windows NT
            Status: NEW
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P2
         Component: CR HTML/XHTML Compatibility Authoring Guide (ed: Eliot
                    Graff)
          Assignee: eliotgra@microsoft.com
          Reporter: johnny_bentley@yahoo.com.au
        QA Contact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org

"Polyglot Markup: A robust profile of the HTML5 vocabulary", W3C Editor's Draft
07 May 2014, 4.6.1 Void elements,
http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-polyglot/html-polyglot.html#empty-elements

This current specification for using empty-element tags exemplifies this
without a space before the forward slash. That is, we currently have examples
like "<br/>".

However, in the past the recommendation (in the web community at large) was to
include a space before the forward slash, as in "<br />", for compatibility
reasons.

I'd recommend including a note, or otherwise amending the document, to clarify
the use of spaces before the forward slash (as in "<br />"). 

I'm not clear on whether any of the current crop of browsers still requires a
usage like "<br />".

I suggest a note to the effect of one of the following be included (depending
on the state of affairs) ...

A) "Both uses, as in '<br/>' or '<br />', are permitted. While a use like '<br
/>' was formerly required for compatibility, this is no longer the case".

B) "Use something like '<br />', not '<br/>', for compatibility reasons."

C) ?

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Received on Thursday, 18 June 2015 17:44:57 UTC