Re: [xml-dev] XMLisms and HTML parsing and modes (was: Re: XML5)

[Liam R E Quin <liam@w3.org>]

On Thu, 2010-12-16 at 19:23 -0500, Liam R E Quin wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-12-16 at 15:38 -0800, Henri Sivonen wrote:
> > On Dec 16, 2010, at 14:13, Liam R E Quin wrote:
> > 
> > > This <syntax /> came from SGML and was already legal in HTML from a
> > > formal standards perspective.
> > 
> > My understanding is that Annex K was added to SGML in late 1997 for
> > the specific purpose of making XML 1.0 a subset of SGML. This was
> > after HTML had been deployed.
> 
> Yes. But the net syntax was already in SGML:1986.

To clarify (thanks to David Carlisle for pointing this out),
(1) HTML did enable NET tags (so Henri was mistaken in
    saying it didn't...) but...
(2) HTML did not change the NET delimiter to "/>" but kept the
    default value of "/"
(3) as a result, <br/ was legal HTML, as was <i/content here/, and
    was generally implemented by at least some of the SGML-based HTML
    tools and programs;
(4) the xml variant, <br/>, is based on changing NET to "/>", and
    although any SGML document (and hence any HTML document before
    HTML 5) can change the SGML declaration to allow />, the default
    was <br/ and not <br/>
    (I'd forgotten that change, so I was mistaken too)

Liam


-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/