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