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

Ian Hickson ian at hixie.ch
Fri Feb 24 15:17:58 PST 2006


On Fri, 8 Apr 2005, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> 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). :-(

HTML5 is for the mainstream browser above all.


> > 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. 
> :-|

Hey, I'm not over-joyous about it myself.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'


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