[whatwg] WA1: <meta> attribute requirements

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, fantasai wrote:
> 
> One way of drawing the line might be, does dropping this requirement 
> result in a semantically-meaningful representation? An empty list 
> represents an empty list. But a <meta> without a 'name', or a <link> 
> without a 'href': these, per spec, represent nothing. They do not even 
> provide any structural semantics as <div> and <span> do; the document 
> has the same semantics as if the element did not exist.

Another way of drawing it could be "does it cause any harm". Markup like:

   <em><p>...</em></p>

...causes harm because it is not representable in a sane DOM structure. 
Markup like:

   <p><em><p>Foo</p></em></p>

...arguably causes harm because its meaning is not defined, and so UAs 
would be at a loss as to how to process it.

But a blank <meta/> is not harmful, it is just meaningless.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
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