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

[Anne van Kesteren]

On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:37:52 +0100, Sam Ruby <rubys at intertwingly.net>  
wrote:
>>  The bug would request that Wordpress doesn't try to output XML for the  
>> text/html media type. That seems to be the problem here.
>
> If the code for Wordpress fit on a page, that suggestion would be easy  
> to implement.
>
> As it stands now, it appear that several hundred lines of code would  
> need to change.  And in each case, the code would need to be aware of  
> the content type in effect.  In some cases, that information may not be  
> available.  In fact, that may not have been determined yet.

Why would the code need to be aware of that? Atom supports type="html".


> One way cross-cutting concerns such as this one are often handled is to  
> simple capture the output and post-process it.  Latchlan opted to do so  
> with the WHATWG Blog.  The first pass for things like this generally  
> takes the form of simple pattern matching and regular expressions.

The solution used on the blog was a simple find (/>) and replace (>).


> Often this evolves.  What would be better is something that could take  
> that string and produce a DOM, from which a correct serialization can  
> take place.

Shouldn't this be done throughout the code instead of at the end?


> Now, what type of parser would you use?  HTML5's rules come  
> tantalizingly close to handling this situation, except for a few cases  
> involving tags that are self-closing...

Those cases are covered as well. You seem to think that "parse error"  
means the same as it does in XML or something. It does not. It merely  
means there's a syntax error and that you can continue parsing following  
the specified rules.


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