[oclug] html tools

[Jon Earle]

On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Michael P. Soulier wrote:

> On 26/08/02 Jon Earle did speaketh:
>
> > You don't close <br>, <hr>, so why close <p>?  It just starts a new
>
>     You do now. You must either type <br></br>, or signify a tag with no
> closing tag with <br />. Like I said, explicit good, implicit bad.

That's just silly.  "Here's a break.  And here's the end of it."

That would imply I can put some text between the tags, such as:

<br>
Windows
</br>

:)

>     You really don't follow the reasoning for this, do you? What you consider
> easy is irrelevant. The intent of the standard is to make it easy for software
> to parse, nothing more. The easier it is to parse, without losing
> functionality, the fewer bugs in parsers (ie. browsers) we'll have.

I don't argue with that, but I maintain that some tags don't need to be
closed... if the standard dictates so, then fine, I'll end up closing tags
like <br>, just like a good little automaton droid.  But, nothing says
that the standard is "good" - as you say, life is change.  Sometimes
standards need to be changed too.

If that makes the parser more complex to write, with the result that the
source file is easier to write (and read), then we've made progress (the
parser will be written once, the source files will be written over and
over and over again, thousands of times).

We should be writing software to conform to the needs of the user, not
force the user to conform to the software.  This is the principle we've
been fighting for whenever we denounce Microsoft, yes?

Cheers!
Jon