- From: William F Hammond <hammond@csc.albany.edu>
- Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:02:22 -0400
- To: public-html@w3.org, www-math@w3.org
James Graham <jg307@cam.ac.uk> writes:
>> So if html is really a problem make /> generate an empty element for all
>> elements unless specified otherwise, and then specify otherwise for all
>> (non-empty) html elements.
>
> I think it is plausible that we will be able to have the parser treat
> "/>" as indicating a void (HTML 5 term for empty, to distinguish it
> from an element with no content) element if that element is to be
> placed into a non-html namespace in the DOM. That's different from
> blacklisting the set of HTML elements, as there are cases where an
> unknown element will be placed in the HTML namespace.
At the time XML, version 1.0, was being discussed there was a fight
about whether <foo/> should be restricted to the case that "foo" was
defined-empty ("void", as you say).
The defined-empty crowd lost, and, since then in XML, more than 10
years now, <foo/> can mean either that "foo" is defined-empty or that
it is a de facto empty container. It would be mischief to depart from
this now.
-- Bill
Received on Wednesday, 2 April 2008 21:03:00 UTC