Tags like <br/> and our current doctype

[Ceri Davies]

On Fri, Mar 04, 2005 at 12:05:21PM +0100, Devon H. O'Dell wrote:
> >From what I recall, tags like <br> are self closing in the HTML 4.0 and
> 4.01 doctypes, i.e. <br /> is redundant and confuses (or is supposed to
> anyway) the parser into thinking the last tag was closed.
> 
> However, if I change this to <br>, even with our doctype, it freaks out.
> I suppose that the parser doesn't really care what our doctype is, it
> just wants the content to be XML-compliant.
> 
> <br> is XML compliant, if you have the right entity definition.
> 
> So I see two possible options for the future:
> 
> 1) Figure out how to make the parser like <br> and keep our current
> doctype (or upgrade to HTML 4.01/Strict), or
> 
> 2) Hop over to XHTML 1.0/Transitional, which will allow us to utilize
> features of XHTML (and let us keep <br />, which is valid in XHTML)
> while still having our Content-type as text/html (this isn't allowed for
> any other XHTML doctype)

#2 is best.  I made a patch ages and ages ago for this (not a full
patchset, mind you) that might even vaguely apply still; search the
archives for a post from me with a subject containing "XHTML" and you
should find it.

At the time the response was a mixture of mild resistance and apathy,
however; it was felt that fixing this wasn't worth the CVS churn as I
recall (yes, that surprised me too).

Ceri
-- 
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm
not sure about the former.			  -- Einstein (attrib.)
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