[whatwg] href on any element

[Lachlan Hunt]

Andrew Fedoniouk wrote:
> Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>> Andrew Fedoniouk wrote:
>>> Ian Hickson wrote:
>>>>   <a href="">
>>>>    <h2>...</h2>
>>>>    <p>...</p>
>>>>   </a>
>>>
>>> If we will change model of A from
>>> <!ELEMENT A - - (%inline;)* -(A)       -- anchor -->
>>> to something else then it will create implications for parser.
>>
>> What implications?  Changing the formal content model of an element 
>> doesn't change the way a parser needs to work.  Ian's example above is 
>> very similar to some real world examples I've seen and browser's 
>> already handle it just fine.
> 
> These are non-conformant browsers :)

No, in this case, they're just handling the non-conformant content in 
the most sane way, which I believe (in this case) is correct handling 
according to traditional SGML rules.

See the Parse Tree produced by the validator for that construct
(ignore the 2 expected validation errors):
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=data%3Atext%2Fhtml%3Bcharset%3Dutf-8%2C%253C%21DOCTYPE%2520a%2520PUBLIC%2520%2522-%252F%252FW3C%252F%252FDTD%2520HTML%25204.01%252F%252FEN%2522%253E%250D%250A%253Ca%2520href%253D%2522%2523%2522%253E%250D%250A%2520%2520%253Ch2%253E...%253C%252Fh2%253E%250D%250A%2520%2520%253Cp%253E...%253C%252Fp%253E%250D%250A%253C%252Fa%253E%2520&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&sp=1

> A simply cannot have content other than inline constructions.

According to the formal content model, yes, but when a browser 
encounters a real world document has that construct, what do you think 
the browser should do with it?

> What UA should do in this case is not specified. Using this
> is as bad as violation of following:

See section 8 of the Web Apps 1.0 spec.
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#parsing

>> The DOM looks like this:
>>
>> A
>> +-H2
>> + P
> 
> And what is semantical meaning of that? Some hyperlinked section?

The A element is just defined as a hyperlink.  Whether or not it's a 
section is irrelevant.

> If yes then let it be just :
> 
> <section href="...">
>  <h2>...
>  <p>...
> </section>

But that isn't backwards compatible.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/