Re: Re(2): SHORTTAGh

Craig Hubley (craig@passport.ca)
Tue, 18 Apr 95 17:42:39 EDT

> Craig Hubley asks:
> >Is there no facility in SGML to make legal certain SHORTTAG constructs
> >and disallow others... I can see the abuses being made of a null end
> >tag, for instance... but if you have to support it in an 'unrecognized'
> >tag then you have to support it, period.
>
> In short, no. The SHORTTAG feature (Clause 13.5.1) combines several kinds of
> name and delimiter omission.
>
> Craig's question was indeed asked during the development of ISO 8879; the
> current conformance clause is the result of compromises (among other things)
> to reduce the number of confomance options in the standard (and thus the

This makes perfect sense. All right, SHORTTAG=YES then. Makes sense to me.

As with the other SGML constructs that many HTML authors may not previously
have encountered, I suggest that a short overview of the implications (i.e.
the types of short tags acceptable) be prepared as a footnote, by excerpt from
(and reference to) the SGML standard, and added to the HTML standards docs.

This should be clearly distinguished to aid reading by those already familiar
with SGML, and should be a true excerpt from the SGML standard rather than a
rewrite. Additional comments should be confined to clarification & example
and should address how the SGML standard impacts appearance of an HTML file.

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