On 07/25/2013 12:27 PM, Nick Williams wrote:
My apologies if this is not the right place to address this. If so, please
forgive and direct me to the correct list.
There are a lot of people/projects complaining about Java 8's new "self-closing element not allowed"
error when compiling JavaDoc that has legal <br /> tags in it (just google "self-closing element not
allowed" in quotes). Some (including myself) are asking, "Why should we fix this? The problem is not in
the JavaDoc, it's in the JavDoc compiler." However, I haven't been able to find anyone who has actually
broached the subject on any mailing lists.
<br /> is completely legal. While it is not strictly required by the HTML standard (unless
you're using XHTML), using self-closing tags is /preferred/ because it's more obvious what the
intention is. Perhaps most importantly, <br /> is supported on 100% of browsers and is used
throughout JavaDoc all over the place. I have a feeling that once more projects start compiling on a
released Java 8, this is going to make a fair number of people angry that hey have to "fix"
(read: needlessly change) potentially thousands of classes' worth of JavaDoc.
What was the motivation behind the new "self-closing element not allowed" check
and how can we make it go away?
Not really having a stake in this, I just want to observe a couple
things. First, from what I can see, the HTML 4.x specifications make no
reference to self-closing elements or their syntactical realization. As
far as I can tell (not being any kind of SGML expert), self-closing
elements are not valid or meaningful HTML according to its SGML definition.
Finally, even if they were allowed, the BR tag is explicitly defined to
forbid an end tag; self-closing elements imply an end tag (at least they
do in XML, which appears to be the next-nearest concrete specification
that has anything to say on the matter).
See http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html#edef-BR for more info.
So I'm curious when you say "using self-closing tags is /preferred/", do
you have any sources to cite?
--
- DML
