Bizarre <script> tag spec

The <script> element content is defined to end:

    > HTML parsers must be able to recognize script data as beginning
    > immediately after the start tag and ending as soon as the ETAGO
    > ("</") delimiters are followed by a name character ([a-zA-Z]).
    > The script data does not necessarily end with the </SCRIPT> end
    > tag, but is terminated by any "</" followed by a name character.

thus, this is illegal:

    >      <SCRIPT type="text/javascript">
    >        document.write ("<EM>This won't work</EM>")
    >      </SCRIPT>

    > A conforming parser must treat the "</EM>" data as the end of
    > script data, which is clearly not what the author intended.

Quite frankly, this seems to be exceptionally dumb. Was there a
sensible reason for this decision?

-- John W Pierce, Chem & Biochem, UC San Diego
   jwp@ucsd.edu

Received on Monday, 14 July 1997 02:23:34 UTC