[rfc-i] draft-iab-xml2rfc-03, "2.12 <br>"

[paul.hoffman at vpnc.org (Paul Hoffman)]

On 9 May 2016, at 6:00, Julian Reschke wrote:

> <https://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-iab-xml2rfc-03.html#rfc.section.2.12>:
>
> "2.12 <br>
>
> Indicates that a line break should be inserted in the generated output 
> by a formatting tool. It is always expressed as <br />. Multiple 
> successive instances of this element do not cause blank lines to 
> appear in the output, and is thus not useful.
>
> This element appears as a child element of <td> (Section 2.56) and 
> <th> (Section 2.58).
>
> Content model: this element does not have any contents."
>
> Question: I assume this is here because splitting the cell's content 
> into multiple <t>s would create too much vertical whitespace?

Correct. There is sometimes a need for just a break, not a blank line.

> Other than that:
>
> - What is "It is always expressed as <br />" about?

So that we do not have the common problem in HTML that people use <br> 
unclosed.

> - "Multiple successive instances of this element do not cause blank 
> lines to appear in the output, and is thus not useful." -- maybe "are 
> not useful" - or just state that they'll be ignored?

Good call: ignored.

> What if there's whitespace in between, such as with "<br/> <br/>"?

Yeeps. That would indeed be a way to insert blank lines in a cell. I 
guess we should allow that in order not to create an arms war with 
people who want blank lines in their cells.

Proposed:

Multiple successive instances of this element are ignored. Successive 
instances with an
intervening white space (such as "&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;") will 
create a single blank line.



On 9 May 2016, at 11:36, Julian Reschke wrote:

> On 2016-05-09 20:26, Miek Gieben wrote:
>> If people feel we *do* need it, then why not allow it everywhere in
>> document?
>
> AFAIR, there *is* a use case for line breaks in table cells, but not 
> anywhere else.

I agree with Julian here. Table cells seem special in the way we 
communicate.

--Paul Hoffman