- From: Robert Burns <rob@robburns.com>
- Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2007 10:37:55 -0500
- To: Philip TAYLOR <Philip-and-LeKhanh@Royal-Tunbridge-Wells.Org>
- Cc: Ben Boyle <benjamins.boyle@gmail.com>, Mynthon Gmail <mynthon1@gmail.com>, public-html@w3.org
On Jul 7, 2007, at 9:47 AM, Philip TAYLOR wrote: > > > > Robert Burns wrote: > >> On Jul 7, 2007, at 6:26 AM, Ben Boyle wrote: > >>> I have noticed the W3C HTML validator is confused by <link ... /> >>> and >>> <meta ... /> empty tags, but had assumed it to be a valiator bug. >> I would agree: validator bug. > > No bug (this needs to be said very clearly). The validator > compares the document [1] with the DTD specified in the DOCTYPE > directive, and finds bare character data. It goes on to > explain : > > > Mistakes that can cause this error > > include putting text directly in the > > body of the document > > and that is effectively what the author has done, since > the "/" closed the <link> tag and the following ">" > closed the <head> element. Note that the diagnostic > is effectively identical to that produced by the very > example that the validator cites [2]. I understand. So call it a DTD bug. Or make a HTML 4.02 (or a 4.01/1.0C) DTD and allow authors to use that. A new DTD could explicitly prohibit NETs. The point is that if someone actually wanted to use null end-tag terminators, those would work in approximately 0% of non-validator HTML processing applications at best. To me that's a bug in the validation process (even if not in the validation code itself). Take care, Rob
Received on Saturday, 7 July 2007 15:38:18 UTC