[whatwg] Allow trailing slash in always-empty HTML5 elements?

[Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis]

On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 16:20 -0500, Sam Ruby wrote: 

> I believe that I could modify my weblog to be simultaneously both
> HTML5 and XHTML5 compliant, modulo the embedded SVG content, something
> that would needs to be discussed separately.

I think having /two/ different serializations of Web Forms 2.0/Web
Applications 1.0 is bad enough. To try and cater to what's effectively a
third serialization compatible with both parsing methods is to reinvent
the "XHTML 1.0 as text/html" mess. Serializing to multiple formats from
a single source is, I think, a better model. Especially as embedded
content may need different treatment too.

> Lachlan's observations [...] on what it would take to 
> change the popular WordPress application to produce HTML5 compliant
> output

As blogging software goes, WordPress is pretty good. But then blogging
software is generally atrocious when it comes to markup. Trying to
design an (X)HTML spec for a group of PHP developers who think it's
persuasive to bang on about their dedication to "web standards" while
serving their project's non-validating XHTML 1.1 homepage as text/html
is doomed to failure.

Adapting WordPress to be an efficient creator of good HTML (4 or 5)
would be a big job, probably entailing a total rethink at some levels.
But hacking WordPress to output valid HTML 4.01 is by no means
impossible. A method for removing the trailing slashes you're worrying
about was posted to the WordPress support forum:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/76431

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis