[whatwg] Allow trailing slash in always-empty HTML5 elements?

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 1 Dec 2006, Mike Schinkel wrote:
> 
> Even though they are both serializations, the vast majority of people 
> producing HTML/XHTML are not doing it by serializing, they are doing it 
> by string concatonation and merging templates. Unfortunately, no matter 
> how much it's lamented that this is the wrong way to do it, it's not 
> going to change by a significant amount and hence it would seem to me to 
> be the enlightened thing to acknowledge and strive to converge HTML with 
> XHTML over time, as much as reasonably possible.

There is an underlying assumption here, namely that there would be 
something wrong with picking one or the other and just using that.

If you want to use XHTML, then use XHTML, send it with an XML MIME type, 
and be happy.

If you want to use HTML, then use HTML, send it with an HTML MIME type, 
and be happy.

You don't need to do one or the other. It's just up to you which you do. 
Neither is better or worse than the other. They are equivalent, neither is 
deprecated, they are both unambiguous, they are both strict, they will 
both have validators and they will both have tools that can be used to 
process them. There's no reason to try and do both.


> Another very beneficial thing would be to ensure there are reference 
> implementations of open source or public domain serializers for XHTML 
> and HTML as part of the spec in all major languages and platforms.

There will be tools available in due course. Right now it's still early 
days; the spec is in flux, so implementations would have to do a lot of 
work to keep track.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'