[whatwg] <p> elements containing other block-level elements

[Lachlan Hunt]

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

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Lachlan Hunt
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