Its complicated, see for example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3558119/are-self-closing-tags-valid-in-html5
The key point here is not whether its in the standard or not, but what people actually *do*. There is no doubt in my mind that <br /> br space slash is very common indeed. Its certainly my default. The javadoc validator should be as lenient as browsers are in this case. Stephen On 25 July 2013 18:41, David M. Lloyd <david.ll...@redhat.com> wrote: > 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
