[Bug 5300] [Serialization] Empty elements in HTML

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=5300





------- Comment #4 from zongaro@ca.ibm.com  2008-03-13 15:20 -------
At joint XQuery/XSL teleconference of 2008-02-26,[3] Liam Quin asked whether
the answer would be different if the only child of the element was a whitespace
text node (action item A-357-03).  In other words, if the value of the indent
parameter was "yes", and an element whose content model in HTML or XHTML is
EMPTY has a single text node child that consists of only whitespace, could a
conforming serializer elide the whitespace and emit only an empty element tag?

The descriptions of the indent parameter on the xhtml output method and html
output methods[4,5] state that whitespace may be added or removed "so long as
it does not change the way that a conforming HTML user agent would render the
output."

In the case of an element whose content model is empty but that actually has a
whitespace text node child, eliding the whitespace might have the effect of
preventing the user agent from reporting an error.  That can be viewed as a
change in the way the user agent would render the output, so it's my belief
that such whitespace must not be elided, and that the proposal stands as it is.

[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-xsl-wg/2008Feb/0054.html (Members
only)
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt-xquery-serialization/#XHTML_INDENT
[5] http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt-xquery-serialization/#HTML_INDENT

Received on Thursday, 13 March 2008 15:21:09 UTC