It all hinges on whether the tool is generating HTML 4 or HTML 5. If 4,
then the output should be HTML 4 "strict" and this kind of input should
either be translated or forced to be valid.
If the output is going to be HTML 5 - which I suspect is going to be
considered "premature" given the usual glacial pace of these kinds of
changes - then perhaps it's time to revisit some other crustiness, like
the use of frames.
On 07/25/2013 12:59 PM, Stephen Colebourne wrote:
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?
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