Posted by Andy Dingley on 02/13/07 12:35

On 13 Feb, 06:31, "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp...@cs.tut.fi> wrote:

> > actually exposed a real flaw in the validator.
>
> Actually, no.

I would regard this as a flaw in the validator, in that it indicates
that simplistic pure DTD-based validation isn't adequate for an entry-
level HTML validator for use by inexperienced authors.

The OP has thrown their bogus code at the validator and they've
receieved an error message that's basically useless. This isn't a good
situation. Although three experienced HTML authors quickly spotted
the real problem, they did this by eyeballing the code, not owing to
any help from the validator.

> > Your code is bogus, although probably not actually invalid.
>
> It is actually invalid; see Rik's answers, or checkhttp://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/empty.html

Of course it's invalid in this case, the validator told us as much. I
was writing of the broader case where the mere use of <br /> or <p />
alone isn't always enough to make it invalid (after all, this page
managed 1300 lines before actually breaking).


> > It seems that the validator recently changed behaviours and
> > started accepting <br /> as valid HTML, when it used to reject
> > it outright.
>
> Nope. I don't think there's any change.

But if my fallible memory serves, this did used to be flagged as an
error? (the nit-picking valid interpretation notwithstanding) It
seems a backward step to have changed this. I suspect that it was done
to reduce "false positives"(sic) on Appendix C XHTML with <br />, but
that's far from a good thing to permit under a HTML doctype.

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