[html5] Should an empty title give an (X)HTML5 validation error?

[Michael[tm] Smith]

Gonzalo HIGUERA DÍAZ <gonhidi at gmail.com>, 2017-04-04 09:34 +0200:
> 
> The (X)HTML5 validators[1,2] mark an empty title as an error. The only
> explicit reference I have found to such a requirement is the 2013-08-06 W3C
> version of the standard.[3]

The requirement is here:

  https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/semantics.html#the-title-element

> Content model:
>   Text that is not inter-element whitespace.
> ...
> The ASCII whitespace are always allowed between elements. User agents
> represent these characters between elements in the source markup as Text
> nodes in the DOM. Empty Text nodes and Text nodes consisting of just
> sequences of those characters are considered inter-element whitespace.

So that means the `title` element must contain at least one character that
is not a whitespace character.

> Should the behaviour of the validator be changed?

The validator conforms to the above spec requirement.

> Also, is this the appropriate place to discuss this? The validator's about
> page suggests discussing such issues here,[4] but the information seems a
> little out of date and it looks like development is happening at the GitHub
> project.[5]

https://github.com/validator/validator is the right place to report
possible bugs in the HTML checker (validator) or even to ask questions.
Asking such questions on this list is fine too

  —Mike

> [1] http://validator.w3.org/
> 
> [2] https://html5.validator.nu/
> 
> [3]
> https://www.w3.org/TR/2013/CR-html5-20130806/document-metadata.html#the-title-element
> 
> [4] https://about.validator.nu/
> 
> [5] https://github.com/validator/validator

-- 
Michael[tm] Smith https://people.w3.org/mike
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/help-whatwg.org/attachments/20170404/d6e0fe35/attachment.pgp>