RE: It isn't a standard if it has hidden rules for historical reasons.

Hi Phil and thanks for the reply,

I had to read it three times but I think I know what is going on and
hopefully you can confirm this for me.

First of all, are you telling my mental model isn't the way the world
works? I hate when that happens! :-)

But I did believe you (they, we, whoever) were trying to make HTML more
XML-like, because it is far easier for a programmer to validate
something with a symmetrical tag open-close structure than one where one
end tag implicitly closes another completely different tag.

Now what you're saying is that it was actually invalid for me to OPEN
that UL, not for me to later close it. Would that be a more 'human'
interpretation of the spec? So your validator (and that in NetBeans IDE
which I assume uses your schema and which is what led me here) has
somehow detected the structural 'problem' before it identified the thing
it believes is responsible for it. I don't get that - are you working
through the file backwards or something?

So OK, the spec isn't really saying that one tag closes another, the
validator just makes it look that way. Right? You'll restore this old
desktop application hacker's faith in web-developer-kind if you say
yes... :-)

Which brings me now to how to make equivalent valid HTML. How do I place
a list directly into a paragraph? By that I mean I don't wish to have a
paragraph break between the text and the start of the list (nor between
the end of the list and subsequent text if applicable). In the past I
would just do it with BR tags and double BRs between paragraphs, but I
thought those were frowned upon now, again because they don't have an
open-close form.

Call me crazy but I would like if possible to accomplish this sort of
basic text flow control without exploding my head trying to use a CSS or
floating DIVs for my simple HTML help file that was only supposed to be
a 5 minute job. :-)

Aaron Oxford | Java/C#/C++ Developer

Received on Wednesday, 9 March 2011 23:39:35 UTC