[whatwg] Re: SHORTTAG NET

[Lachlan Hunt]

Ian Hickson wrote:
>>Would it be at all possible to have this SHORTTAG feature implemented in 
>>UAs these days? ...
> 
> Too many documents of all kinds use the XHTML syntax, sadly.

Hmmm. That's what I suspected.

> Mozilla, several _years_ ago, used to parse <foo/> in HTML as <foo></foo>.  Even
> then (we're talking like 2000 or something) it was so common to find pages 
> with that kind of markup that Mozilla had to stop doing it. Now it's bound 
> to be an even worse problem.

Oh well; I guess there will never be a main stream UA that fully 
supports SGML, and thus HTML.

> It's a lost battle, sadly. That's why fantasai turned off SHORTTAG NET in 
> the SGML declaration for WHATWG.

Fair enough; I guess it would only be useful as an historical curiosity 
anyway, considering that most authors have never heard of such a thing 
and wouldn't use it.  In fact, neither had until I read your XHTML 
advocacy document.

I had thought that given a brand new doctype, it would be possible to 
enable it using a DOCTYPE switch, but then realised that these documents 
will more than likely be built and tested environments comprising mostly 
IE tag-soup developers, and thus authors will more than likely to screw 
it up anyway.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt

http://www.lachy.id.au/
lachlan.hunt at lachy.id.au