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Bug 28825 - Should empty-element tags include a space before forward slash e.g. "<br />"?
Summary: Should empty-element tags include a space before forward slash e.g. "<br />"?
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: CR HTML/XHTML Compatibility Authoring Guide (ed: Eliot Graff) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC Windows NT
: P2 enhancement
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: This bug has no owner yet - up for the taking
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
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Reported: 2015-06-18 17:44 UTC by John Bentley
Modified: 2015-06-18 18:02 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

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Attachments

Description John Bentley 2015-06-18 17:44:54 UTC
"Polyglot Markup: A robust profile of the HTML5 vocabulary", W3C Editor's Draft 07 May 2014, 4.6.1 Void elements, http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-polyglot/html-polyglot.html#empty-elements

This current specification for using empty-element tags exemplifies this without a space before the forward slash. That is, we currently have examples like "<br/>".

However, in the past the recommendation (in the web community at large) was to include a space before the forward slash, as in "<br />", for compatibility reasons.

I'd recommend including a note, or otherwise amending the document, to clarify the use of spaces before the forward slash (as in "<br />"). 

I'm not clear on whether any of the current crop of browsers still requires a usage like "<br />".

I suggest a note to the effect of one of the following be included (depending on the state of affairs) ...

A) "Both uses, as in '<br/>' or '<br />', are permitted. While a use like '<br />' was formerly required for compatibility, this is no longer the case".

B) "Use something like '<br />', not '<br/>', for compatibility reasons."

C) ?
Comment 1 Eliot Graff 2015-06-18 17:50:14 UTC
I'm afraid I am no longer editing this spec.
Comment 2 John Bentley 2015-06-18 18:02:57 UTC
That's a shame, so far it's been a well written document.

Would the following therefore be the right course of action for you to take:

* Take your name off the document "Polyglot Markup: A robust profile of the HTML5 vocabulary" as a current editor (and list yourself as a former editor); and
* Contact Leif H. Silli to see if they would be happy to include their email here at bugzilla, against the "CR HTML/XHTML Compatibility Authoring Guide" (Polyglot Markup: A robust profile of the HTML5 vocabulary) entries.
* Ensure Leif is aware of this "bug" (the first "bug" for the document?).

?