>I've seen instances in HTML documents generated by WebMaker that contain
>anchors with no end tag, as if the anchor DTD were:
>
> <!ELEMENT A - O %A.content -(A)>
>
>rather than
>
> <!ELEMENT A - - %A.content -(A)>
>
>It seems like there is no technical reason why this could not be made the
>actual DTD for the anchor element. It's even useful, when the anchor does not
>contain an HREF, only a NAME or ID. Might encourage sloppy coding, though.
>What do others think about this?
>
It is common usage, that for elements which appear in inclusion exception
lists end tag omission is not allowed. Otherwise the place where an end tag
would be implied by a SGML parser would depend very much on the version of
the HTML DTD used, since it would be the first start tag not allowed in the
content of A preceding an end tag of an element enclosing the anchor tag.
That was: regarding _SGML parsers_. A WWW client would either use a simpler
method (deviating from them SGML standard), or clients would have to be
SGML-aware. Both are undesirable consequences.
Finally, not only WWW clients would have to figure out where the A element
ends, but authors of HTML documents would have to do that, too.
------------------------------------------
Wolfgang Rieger
c/o Buero fuer Software-Entwicklung
Frankfurter Ring 193a
80807 Munich
Germany
Tel. : +89 323 19 93 Fax: +89 323 19 93
Email: rieger@colin.muc.de
------------------------------------------