[whatwg] Allow trailing slash in always-empty HTML5 elements?
Lachlan Hunt
lachlan.hunt at lachy.id.au
Sat Dec 2 09:21:09 PST 2006
Elliotte Harold wrote:
> Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>
>> Because the fact is that when authors try to use XHTML as text/html,
>> they inevitibly fail to do so properly. It takes considerable
>> knowledge and skill to be aware of and handle all issues ranging from
>> parsing, character encodings to scripts and stylesheets.
>
> All it really takes is minimal tool support. If systems like WordPress
> and DreamWeaver that hide the HTML start generating well-formed HTML,
> that's half the battle right there.
I think the recent discussion about WordPress proved that isn't going to
happen any time soon.
> The other half could be addressed by one little box in the corner of
> Firefox's status bar that's a smiley face if the page is valid, and a
> frown if it isn't.
Developers already have the option to install extensions for that.
http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/
http://relaxed.sourceforge.net/firefox-plugin.html
> Most hand authors including myself don't always achieve well-formedness
> because nothing pricks us if we don't.
It does when you use the correct MIME type!
> Even the tiniest annoyance from a bad page, would cause us to check the
> error logs and fix the problems.
The Yellow Screen of Death is about as annoying as you can get. I
really don't understand how you can go on about the benefits of XML
because it requires well-formedness, but then turn around and say XML
can be served as text/html which just makes all your arguments null and
void.
> Fixing a page to be well-formed and even valid XHTML is not hard, and
> well within the abilities of most people hand authoring HTML.
Hmmm. You obviously haven't seen a lot of the rubbish that many people,
including those that hand code, actually produce. Perhaps you keep
forgetting that people like us who can easily produce well-formed and
valid markup are in the minority.
> The problem is when we don't realize we have a problem in the first place.
The problem is that you're using the wrong MIME type.
--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/
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