Re: Void elements in HTML (Was: ZIP-based packages and URI references into them ODF proposal)

Ian Hickson wrote:
> ...
> I don't understand. Producers know which syntax to use because the spec 
> very precisely defines the exact syntax to use in the "Writing HTML 
> documents" section, and consumers know how to process this syntax because 
> of the very precise rules in the "Parsing HTML documents" section.
> 
> What's the problem?

For unknown elements?

> ...
> Why not? Void elements are great, and other than a little pain every few 
> years when new ones are introduced, they don't cause any long-term 
> problems. After all, the pain caused by new void elements is minute 
> compared to the pain of actually implementing those new elements.

The pain is substantial if it means that serializers and parsers need to 
be updated for no other reason than that change. Even worse, people may 
not realize that they *need* to upgrade their libraries, because 
consumers silently correct the errors. So this will *cause* broken 
content to appear in the wild.

Keep in mind that in many cases, people use components that they can not 
easily be change (for instance, the HTML serializer in Java comes to mind).


Best regards, Julian

Received on Tuesday, 30 December 2008 13:16:40 UTC