Tags like <br/> and our current doctype

[Devon H. O'Dell]

On Fri, 2005-03-04 at 11:35 +0000, Ceri Davies wrote:
> 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.

Well, it currently validates as XHTML. Just need to work out a couple
quirks in the layout :)

> 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

It had sure better be now! :)

--Devon