Empty Elements
"Empty elements" were introduced to HTML by mistake: presentational markup crept into the language, contrary to the spirit of SGML, and with some strange syntactic implications. This fundamental error has caused some technical problems like an unintended discrepancy between HTML and XHTML, causing surprises in validation. More importantly, it illustrates the implications of the decision to make HTML formally, and only formally, an "SGML application". "Empty elements" are more than they look like. |
2003-11-25 |
