- From: Jukka K. Korpela <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi>
- Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 23:26:38 +0200
- To: "css-validator" <www-validator-css@w3.org>
olivier Thereaux wrote: >> http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/struct/ >> text.html#h-9.3.1 >> Is this not enough? > > Right, empty paragraphs are not a good idea, which is basically what > the specification says. Note that the prose stays away from applying > any form of normative stress, no MUST, no SHOULD. If the statement "We discourage authors from using empty P elements", made in a W3C recommendation, does not have any form of normative stress, I wonder what has. And actually, it additionally says: "User agents should ignore empty P elements." The word "should" is not in uppercase, but according to clause 4, this is not significant: "The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. However, for readability, these words do not appear in all uppercase letters in this specification." Surely if the specification says that empty paragraphs should be ignored, it would be manifestly, grossly, extraordinarily stupid idea to use them in the hope of creating empty space with them (which is why they are used, apart from mere mistakes and slips). Now, getting back to reality, we know that browsers do not ignore empty paragraphs, and I don't expect they ever will. But technically, the HTML 4.01 specifications say they should, and there is no reference to styling here - so styled or unstyled, <p></p> should be ignored. This of course also applies to implicitly closed empty paragraphs, as in <p><table ... -- Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Received on Wednesday, 4 March 2009 21:27:32 UTC