[whatwg] 9.1.2.1: trailing slash and atheism

[Charles Iliya Krempeaux]

Hello Ian,

On 12/1/06, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 1 Dec 2006, Elliotte Harold wrote:
> >
> > 9.1.2.1 states:
> >
> > Then, if the element is one of the void elements, then there may be a
> single
> > U+002F SOLIDUS character. This character has no effect [...]
> >
> > The second sentence is false [...] I suggest rewriting as follows:
> >
> > This character has no effect when the document is parsed by an HTML5
> parser.
>
> That's redundant. Parsing a document using this syntax with anything other
> than an HTML5 parser would be non-conforming.
>
>
> > However, if the document when parsed by an XML parser, the trailing
> > slash converts the tag into an empty-element tag, and thereby makes an
> > otherwise malformed element well-formed.
>
> This section has nothing to do with XML. If the document was parsed by an
> XML parser, then there are much bigger problems afoot, such as MIME type
> mislabelling, or a faulty UA.
>

Sometimes web developers parse (non-XML) HTML with an XML parser because
it's the tool they have on hand.

Consider a PHP developer trying to analyse an HTML page.

If a PHP developer wants to analyse an HTML page; that developer may try to
use SimpleXML <http://php.net/simplexml> because that's what they have on
hand and know how to use.  There's no SimpleHTML available in PHP.

And while none of this is certainly our fault.  This is a situation some web
developers are going to run into.  (What else are they going to use?)


See ya

-- 
    Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.

    charles @ reptile.ca
    supercanadian @ gmail.com

    developer weblog: http://ChangeLog.ca/
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