Re: to </p> or not to </p>

Hi Mark,

At 11:47 AM 9/22/2003 -0700, you wrote:
> Jacob Kjome <hoju@xxxxxxxx> writes:
> > I'm wondering what peoples' thoughts are about DOM serialization and
> > dealing with <p> elements.  Currently, XMLC treats the <p> tag specially,
> > classifying it as a tag that shouldn't have an end tag written for
> > it..  This seems to have been an arbitrary preference of early developers
> > of XMLC.
>
> I can't really remember why this was done.  I think it's the only tag were the
> the close tag is optional that is included in the NO_CLOSE_TAGS list.

Yep, which is why it seems rather arbitrary.

> > So, does anyone have a problem with modifying XMLC to force <p> tags to be
> > ended with </p>?  Obviously, either form is legal HTML4.01, but ending <p>
> > tags with </p> seems like the more correct thing to do and matches up with
>
> I think the only thing that can be argued here is that it's more consistent
> with the rest of the formatting.  Since minimization is a part of HTML,
> neither form is really more correct.

Yep, otherwise we'd exclude the end tag for stuff all the following:  <p>, 
<colgroup>, <dd>, <dt>, <li>, <option>, <tbody>, <td>, <tfoot>, <th>, 
<thead>, <tr>.  To me, either all of these exclude the optional end tag or 
none of them do.  Besides, markup such as complex tables are almost [human] 
unreadable with end tags excluded.

And, actually, minimization is part of XHTML as much as it is for 
HTML.  <br> in HTML is, after all, <br/> in XHTML.  Both are 
minimized.  The difference in HTML is that some non-minimized elements 
(mentioned above) don't require an end tag.

> > the the next wave of HTML which is XHTML.  People really should get 
> used to
> > this at this point, but I'm asking for opinions here because I don't want
> > to break everyone's layouts unnecessarily.
>
> Personally, I don't see this as an advantage, since XHTML and HTML still
> have fundamentally different formatting.  It's really deceptive to
> imply otherwise.  I would rather educate people on the differences
> (and why this is a good motivation to use XHTML).

I tend to disagree here.  There are only a few basic differences between 
valid HTMl4.01 Strict and XHTML1.0 Strict, especially if one makes it a 
practice to include optional end tags in the HTML.  The only real 
difference is that tags where end tags are forbidden in HTML simply add a 
forward slash at the end of the tag (just before the greater-than 
sign).  Otherwise, they are exactly the same.  XHTML1.0 doesn't even 
require an XML header, only a doctype which is perfectly compatible with 
HTML documents.

> I think it really comes down to aesthetics and consistent behavior of the
> formatter vs a small chance of irritating a buggy browser. Not sure it's
> really worth the trouble, but then I often do somewhat risky things
> in the name of consistency.

I like consistency and I'm pinging the group to make sure I'm not doing 
something "risky".

Jake