Re: HTML and end tags

Bert Bos (bert@let.rug.nl)
Fri, 7 Jan 1994 16:01:28 +0100 (MET)

|As best I understand HTML has some optional end tags for markup.
|(i.e. it is optional to have a </P> after a <P>).
|
|Since presently I'm writing a HTML syntax checker (actually full
|base parser), and I'm trying to track down all areas of "fuzzyness"
|in an HTML document. The <P> .. </P> is simply to ignore/understand,
|but things get a little problimatic when faced with:
| <A NAME="Some Nice Name">
|Since this is an anchor tag it really should have an </A> associated
|with it, but they don't. So at the very least this brings up the

According to the draft DTD for HTML+, the </a> end tag *is*
obligatory, unlike the </p>.

Since HTML+ will be defined by the DTD (unlike HTML, where a DTD was
added as an afterthought), there can be no "fuzzyness" in the syntax.
(Semantics is another matter.)

Btw., an HTML+ checker is nice, but why don't you use "sgmls"? It is
an SGML parser, so by implication it is also an HTML+ parser. In fact,
I use it routinely to check (and even generate!) the pages for our
soon to be announced WWW server.

Bert

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