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

[Anne van Kesteren]

On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:15:53 +0100, Sam Ruby <rubys at intertwingly.net>  
wrote:
>> I do not think it's a good idea to make the trailing slash conforming.  
>> Although it is harmless, it provides no additional benefit at all and  
>> it creates the false impression that the syntax actually does something.
>>  The fact is that authors already try things like <div/>, <p/> and even  
>> <a/>.  I've seen all of those examples in the wild.  See, for instance,  
>> the source of the XML 1.0 spec (and many others) which claim to be  
>> XHTML as text/html, littered with plenty of <a/> tags all throughout.
>
> If these are common, and implemented interoperably, then what is the  
> harm?  An example of something that is NOT implemented interoperably is  
> <script src="..."/>.

What do you mean with implemented interoperably? They are all treated as  
if they are just a start tag. (So they are actually treated identically to  
the <script src=""/> case, except for some versions of Safari and Opera  
and maybe Firefox which do what some people might expect for <script  
src="" /> ...)


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>
<http://www.opera.com/>