RE: Ignoring empty paragraphs

Ian Graham wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, Braden N. McDaniel wrote:
> > On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, Matthew Brealey wrote:
> >
> > > Jason Orendorff writes:
> > > > There is already a CSS property 'empty-cells' that affects how empty
> > > > table cells are rendered.  Perhaps there should be an
> > > >
> > > >   P:empty { display: none; }
> > >
> > > This is not necessary. Empty elements are 'ignored' by CSS, at least
> > > with all current implementation's (except Netscape 4, which is so
> > > completely broken that it will give different margins depending on
> > > whether or not you include end tags on elements such as P) UA style
> > > sheets.
> >
> > You are making assumptions, though, about the UA default style sheet here.
> > There is nothing in the specs to prevent a UA default style sheet from
> > including a rule
> >
> >   p { border: 1px black solid }

Yes. But they don't. And they never will do so it's not really relevant/

> > Granted, this is an edge case. But the bottom line is that your assertion
> > that an "empty" pseudo-class is unnecessary hinges on unspecified
> > behavior.

Something is necessary if it is useful. It seems that the reason that
this is wanted is for sanctimonious reasons of 'Thou shalt not produce
tag soup'. As such the pseudo-class is useless. No-one would use it.

> I agree. But it's interesting to note that Mozilla (M14) and IE 5 don't
> render borders on 'empty' paragraphs ....
> (http://www.java.utoronto.ca/~igraham/html-tests/zero.html, et al.)

Yes I had noted this too (on empty elements altogether in fact). It's a
bug of course.