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Message-ID: <1766467.D2KPVSPYKU@PointedEars.de>
From: Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de>
Reply-To: Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <php@PointedEars.de>
Organization: PointedEars Software (PES)
Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:51:07 +0200
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Subject: Re: Question about new lines
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Jeff Gaines wrote:

> Jerry Stuckle wrote:
>> Which isn't valid on html - only xhtml or xml.
> 
> There seems to be confusion about whether or not the / is optional.

Yes, that only *seems* to be so.

> In reality, of course, all browsers honour it.

Your logic is flawed.  You simply cannot know about *all* browsers.

AISB, *some* browsers, perhaps the majority in terms of market share, do not 
implement the SGML Declaration for HTML 4.01 [1] properly, which specifies 
the SHORTTAG syntax for HTML so that `<br />' is equivalent to `<br>&gt;' in 
HTML (that allows, for example `<h1/My Title/' instead of `<h1>My 
Title</h1>') [2].  But the W3C Validator [3] does, which is why, e. g.,

  <link … rel="…" … />

is _not_ a Valid HTML 4.01 fragment (as `&gt;' would be character data which 
is not allowed within the `HEAD' element).

This has led to the *current* HTML5 Working Draft regarding the trailing `/' 
between `<' and the corresponding `>' of a start tag as allowed and optional 
in the HTML syntax of HTML5 [4,5].  But you SHOULD NOT rely on that
outside of HTML5, perhaps not even in HTML5 until it has become stable.


HTH

PointedEars
___________
[1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/sgml/sgmldecl.html>
[2] <http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/HTMLandSGML.html>
[3] <http://validator.w3.org/>
[4] <http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-html5-20110525/syntax.html#start-tags>
[5] <http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-html5-20110525/introduction.html#html-vs-
xhtml>
-- 
Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on
a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web,
when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another
computer, another word processor, or another network. -- Tim Berners-Lee