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

[Hallvord R M Steen]

On 30/11/06, Anne van Kesteren <annevk at opera.com> wrote:
> > Closing slash on void elements
> > sounds like a good example of "this is invalid because we're sticking
> > to our fixed ideas"[1] rather than "this is invalid for technical
> > reasons like causing ambiguities in DOM parsing". So I support Sam's
> > approach.

> Well, nothing per the parsing section causes "ambiguities in DOM parsing"
> (assuming I understand what that means). So I'm not sure what you're
> suggesting.

It's the core of the debate, namely if <img /> isn't technically a
problem why are validators required to flag it as invalid? The counter
examples are comparisons with <div /> which isn't parsed into the DOM
most would expect when sent as HTML, and corner cases like

<base href=http://example.org/bar/>

- now, how do you resolve relative URLs in this document? This is the
sort of ambiguity the DOM parsing has to take into account - caused by
the usage of forward closing slashes within tags. If the spec can
specify simple non-ambiguous ways of parsing that like the author
expects I think we can relax validation requirements like Sam wants.

> > That said, HTML5 must see
> >
> > <input type="checkbox" checked/>
> >
> > as a checkbox input with a "checked" attribute.
>
> It does.

Included in the discussion to make sure HTML5 continues to do so even
if the change I want (more liberal validation) is taken in.

-- 
Hallvord R. M. Steen