[whatwg] <p> elements containing other block-level elements
Lachlan Hunt
lachlan.hunt at lachy.id.au
Fri Apr 8 04:05:21 PDT 2005
Ian Hickson wrote:
> (Note that HTML1 was not an SGML application; HTML2 was retrofitted into the
> SGML world for theoretical reasons, but the real world never really caught
> up with that theory.)
Yes, I'm aware of what HTML 1 was (Martin Bryan explains it well [1],
for anyone that doesn't know) and, IMO, it was a very good decision to
formalise it as SGML. However, as you say, the real world never caught
on, and, sadly, probably never will (at least not in any mainstream
browser). :-(
> In practice, though, the reason is the same as for MathML: The XML parser
> is a generic parser, the HTML parser is not.
I assume you mean tag-soup parser? :-) Yes, I understand the problem.
> We can change content models and add concepts like namespaces to the XML
> parser easily; we can at best add new elements when it comes to the HTML
> parser.
Fair enough. I guess this is one reason why XHTML is so good – the
mistakes of the past with SGML/HTML won't be repeated, and progress
won't be held up so much by buggy browsers. it's just a pity it's not
yet supported in IE. I'm also starting to understand why you don't
consider HTML an application of SGML, although I still don't like it. :-|
[1] http://www.is-thought.co.uk/book/home.htm
--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/
http://GetFirefox.com/ Rediscover the Web
http://GetThunderbird.com/ Reclaim your Inbox
More information about the whatwg
mailing list