Geoff Deering wrote:
I am talking about CSS applied to HTML and the rendering of the CSS as
applied to the parsing of the document. But still, strictly speaking, an
XML based document is bound to be more semantically correct because it is
well formed. This means that the CSS can be applied without fear of the
parser misunderstanding where a declaration could have finished. There is
no possibility of any guess work in xhtml as it is well formed.
You are talking about two distinctly different parsers. XHTML is a XML subset, HTML is an SGML subset.
For example:
In XHTML:
<ul> <li>One item</li> <li>Second item <li>Third item</li> </ul>
This will throw an error because it is bad XML
In HTML it will not. With the SGML parser it knows that when it arrives at a new <li> it is the beginning of a new list item. The same would apply, for example, to a <p> paragraph. Surely you don't believe that it would render
<p>This paragraph <p>This other paragraph
as a paragraph within a paragraph. You need to revise your understandings. HTML is NOT XML. Admittedly, XHTML contains inheritance to certain HTML objects but it is wholly a XML subset. You shouldn't try to argue about parsing when they are parsed by two different types of engines.
You're missing the point. Closing tags is being completely accurate with
punctuation, where markup is the punctuation. Not closing tags CAN lead to
ambiguity. In XHTML there is no syntax ambiguity, in HTML4 there are
possibilities. It may not happen when validating against the doctype.
Once again you are arguing for ambiguity. It is wrong to assume this. SGML allows for the omission of end tags because it follows a different ruleset
-- Paul Connolley SQL/Systems Programmer Egocentric - http://egocentric.co.uk
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