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

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

On 11 May 2016, at 8:17, Julian Reschke wrote:

> On 2016-05-11 16:19, Paul Hoffman wrote:
>> 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.
>
> IHMO it's both incorrect (the following are just fine: "<br/>" and 
> "<br></br>"), and misleading, as the problem you're referring to is 
> very specific to serving XHTML content as text/html to ancient 
> browsers.

OK, removed.

>
>>>>> - "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.
>
> But the addition puts additional burden on formatters - are they 
> supposed to be aware of all whitespace-y Unicode code points? I would 
> recommend to just drop this.

Yes, that sounds easiest. Done.

--Paul Hoffman