Re: HTML 3.0 suggestion

Daniel W. Connolly (connolly@beach.w3.org)
Thu, 28 Sep 1995 17:24:16 -0400


In message <9509282025.AA08151@ceco.ceco.com>, Carl Benker writes:
> but the source that I was using:
>
>http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec.ps
>
>which is the Sept. 22 draft of the HTML 2.0 spec doesn't show
>a </LI> tag.

Touche!

On the other hand, it does say:

http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_1.html#SEC1

|Introduction
|
[...]
|
|As HTML is an application of SGML, this specification assumes
|a working knowledge of [SGML].

This is an unfortunate property of the HTML 2.0 spec. I'm working
on supplementary documentation to remove the need to buy and grok
a copy of the SGML standard just to read the HTML spec.

http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_3.html#SEC12

|Tags
|
[...]
|
|Some elements only have a start-tag without an end-tag. For
|example, to create a line break, use the `<BR>' tag. Additionally,
|the end tags of some other elements, such as Paragraph (`</P>'),
|List Item (`</LI>'), Definition Term (`</DT>'), and Definition
|Description (`</DD>') elements, may be omitted.

> The
>only reason that this has come up is that on some browsers,
>not using a </LI> tag results in a list being displayed
>horizontally instead of vertically.

This is a bug. An HTML user agent is required to behave exactly
the same whether the </LI> is present or not. It's in the
conformance clause of the spec.

> Maybe the spec draft
>could be updated to show the use of the closing tag for list
>items?

Not for 6 months :-) It's been approved as Proposed Standard.
The next chance to revise it is when it moves to Draft Standard.

> Also, maybe the use of the closing tags for list items
>and paragraphs could be recommended?

Doesn't sound like a good idea.

Dan