HTML and end tags

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Date: Fri, 7 Jan 1994 04:14:21 -0800
From: koblas@netcom.com (David Koblas)
Message-id: <199401071214.EAA11635@mail.netcom.com>
To: www-talk@www0.cern.ch
Subject: HTML and end tags
Content-Length: 1017

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
question of what is the meaning of the following:

        <PRE>
        <A HREF=reference>this is some text
        <A NAME=here>that is all</A>
        an anchor.</A>
        </PRE>

Or some equally similar contrived example.  Now from the working HTML+
spec, I see that NAME= is now ID=, but the same question still lurks.
Is it required to have an ending mark, thus one correctly needs to
specify <A ID=tag></A> to insert a simple reference?

Thanks,
--koblas@netcom.com