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

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

On 10 May 2016, at 21:34, Julian Reschke wrote:

> On 2016-05-11 02:24, Paul Hoffman wrote:
>> ...
>>> 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.
>
> a) That is not a problem in HTML, it's actually the right way to do 
> it. It *is* a problem in XHTML.
>
> b) Why call out <br/>? We are in XML land, this applies to *any* empty 
> element.

Yes, but <br> is one that is known to many folks from HTML editing. The 
text is here to prevent expected common mistakes by novices; I think it 
is reasonable to do so.

>
>>> - "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.
>
> Devils advocate: does this apply to *any* Unicode whitespace 
> character?

Any that is allowed in XML input in our tools, yes.

> Proposal: don't try to prevent this on the vocabulary level; but maybe 
> mention that if you want a single empty line, "<t>" is the thing to 
> use.

Note that I didn't try to prevent it. That's the point of the addition.

--Paul Hoffman