Re: Ignoring empty paragraphs

On Tue, 4 Apr 2000 03:09:26 -0400 (EDT), "Braden N. McDaniel"
<braden@endoframe.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 4 Apr 2000, Jan Roland Eriksson wrote:
>> On Mon, 3 Apr 2000 19:53:18 -0400 (EDT), "L. David Baron"
>> <dbaron@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>> > 1) An empty P element should be ignored at the parsing stage, and
>> >    therefore should not appear in the DOM and should not be affected
>> >    by style sheets.
>> 
>> This is the correct interpretation.

[...]

>> If there's nothing to mark-up, there's no motivation for markup either.

>Indeed, but it is *not* the parser's job to fix errant document structure! 
>It is the parser's job to read the markup that's there. And as long as
>it's valid, the DOM tree should have a direct correspondence to the
>plaintext representation.

Fair enough. But...

What about "styling" of non existing content?
Leave that no-content element dangling in the DOM tree and we need to
move the decision not to style it to the CSS renderer instead.

If not, we will not have a way to discourage the use of successive P's
for vertical spacing, and that is what I think David's question was all
about.

-- 
Jan Roland Eriksson <jrexon@newsguy.com>
<URL:http://member.newsguy.com/%7Ejrexon/>

Received on Sunday, 9 April 2000 15:02:00 UTC