Re: Empty element tags

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 8:23 AM, Murray Maloney <murray@muzmo.com> wrote:

> James,
>
> As a content creator, I tend to agree that it is easier to write <empty
> foo="bar"/> than it is to write <empty foo="bar"></empty>
>
> More importantly, the empty element version reinforces the notion that
> content is not allowed inside of this element. Thus it assists writers and
> editors who may not be experts in markup languages.
>

But use of empty element syntax is not really saying that content is not
*allowed* inside of the element, though I agree that, that probably happens
to be the most common case. I wouldn't want use of an empty element to send
a strong signal to another writer or editor on a document that they cannot
expand the element to have content. Such a signal should strictly come from
the schema layer.

I do agree that empty element syntax is nice for authors, and it doesn't
complicate the syntax much (one additional production).  James has
advocated that it have no role at all in the data model, so no complication
there at this stage.


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