- From: James Clark <jjc@jclark.com>
- Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 12:02:16 +0000
- To: Bill Smith <bill.smith@eng.sun.com>
- Cc: w3c-sgml-wg@w3.org
At 18:21 14/10/96 -0700, Bill Smith wrote: >Len Bullard wrote: > >> 3. Is the processing time severe for the case you state? >> I realize this question has many hands to argue with. > >While the average case time may not be "severe", the worst case behavior may be >and therefor cannot be ignored. > >If an empty element is inserted high in a document instance (say an <A> within a >high-level <DIV> in HTML 3.2), the emptiness of <A> cannot be inferred until the >enclosing element is closed - or the parser performs lookahead. Either way, >processing is delayed and application complexity increases. Isn't the problem even worse than this? You don't just to figure out that empty elements are in fact empty, you also have to figure out that non-empty elements are not in fact empty. The first time I see a chapter tag, I can't tell that it is not in fact an empty tag until I see its close tag. So either I can't start displaying the chapter until I have got the whole chapter or I have to assume initially that every tag is non-empty and be able to go back and reformat when I discover one that's not. This just is not going to work. James
Received on Tuesday, 15 October 1996 07:07:46 UTC