- From: Dave J Woolley <DJW@bts.co.uk>
- Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 16:48:35 +0100
- To: www-html@w3.org
> From: James Stapleton [SMTP:stapleton@mps.ohio-state.edu] > > I was wondering, could a tag be added to clear ALL text formatting > (basically > [DJW:] I'm not a member either, but the answer is obviously "No"! > null all tag bits) so that all text afterwards is not marked up by tags > (unless > a tag is put after the no-format tag) > [DJW:] I think you have been misled by the broken parsing in some browsers. There are no tag bits. HTML elements are strictly nested (although some, but not all, allow the closing tag to be inferred by a context that is not allowed within the element. This type of parsing is often called "tag soup" because the browser applies semantics to tags as it sees them, rather than viewing the document as nested structures. E.g. <b><i>text</b>more text</i> is does not turn on a b bit then an i bit, process some text, turn off the b bit then turn off the i bit. Instead, it is simply illegal, and a browser attempting error recovery could infer </i> before the </b> and delete the </i> just as much as using the tag soup tactic. Style sheets require proper nesting for correct behaviour and XHTML also requires valid structure.
Received on Monday, 26 June 2000 11:55:49 UTC