- From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 23:55:23 -0700
- To: Robert Burns <rob@robburns.com>
- Cc: Philip Taylor <philip@zaynar.demon.co.uk>, public-html@w3.org
On Jul 16, 2007, at 10:28 PM, Robert Burns wrote: > > > On Jul 16, 2007, at 10:00 PM, Robert Burns wrote: > >> >> >> On Jul 16, 2007, at 9:44 PM, Philip Taylor wrote: >> >>> >>> Robert Burns wrote: >>>> First, I think there's a danger of going into too much detail >>>> regarding optional tags. The only things I think might need to be >>>> in an introductory section (maybe) are: >>>> 1) that empty elements must have their closing tag omitted unless >>>> an author uses the xml-style self-closing tag (e.g., <link />). >>>> 2) that empty elements must be closed when using the xml >>>> serialization: i..e., either (<link></link> or <link />) >>>> So to avoid this confusion and simplify things, it may make sense >>>> to always recommend (or as far as this introduction goes, just >>>> gloss- over the difference so that authors use) the self-closing >>>> tag for empty elements. >>> >>> Teaching authors about XML-style self-closing tags is also a cause >>> of confusion. >> >> >> Just to clarify, when I wrote "empty elements", I meant canonically >> empty elements (i.e., elements required to be empty). Yes, I agree >> that encouraging the shortcut everywhere be a bad thing for the >> text/html serialization. I don't think any of your following >> examples relate to that. > > What I meant to say here is that none of the examples relate to the > elements with empty content models and that the examples you listed > are specifically elements that do not have empty content models. I > think we if advised authors to use the self-closing tag on elements > with empty content models (and highlighted how the chapter shows > those at the beginning of each section/subsection), that would be a > simple guideline to follow (for an introductory section). Getting > into more detail than that right there (e.g., discussing differences > between xml and non-xml serializations) would be counter-productive. I think its better to advise authors that some tags don't have a close tag, and list what those are. That seems less confusing than telling them to use a self-closing syntax in such cases, when that syntax does not in fact indicate self-closing in HTML at all. Regards, Maciej
Received on Tuesday, 17 July 2007 06:55:34 UTC