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Re: LYNX-DEV ALIGNment problem


From: Klaus Weide
Subject: Re: LYNX-DEV ALIGNment problem
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 11:34:07 -0600 (CST)

On Fri, 13 Dec 1996, Jason Baker wrote:
> In a previous missive, Al Gilman wrote:
> > 
> >   From: Klaus Weide <address@hidden>
> >   
> >   I don't know whether the alignment handling should be changed, or
> >   how to do it, or whether that would create more problems than it
> >   solves.  Just pointing out a real example where it fails, I guess..
> >   
> > This looks like an excellent piece of detective work, the conclusion
> > of which is "It's a feature."  If people want to use <P> to impose
> > alignment, they can explicitly close it, IMHO.  
> 
> Indeed, that's always the way I learned it - if you just want a space,
> you can use <P> as a separator, but if you want anything else, you must
> use it as an encasement, and pair it with </P>....  That's one thing I
> insist on my helpers doing is using encasement paragraphs all the time.
> Doesn't make me a lot of friends, but it does help our pages pass 
> validation. :)

Yeah, but it's a Lynxism to treat <P> that way (doesn't matter whether
it is also a Netscapism or whateverism, I wouldn't even know...).  
All HTML DTDs I have looked at (okay, they're not that many) seem to
define P as a container with a closing tag which can be omitted,
which means (correct me if I am wrong) that a parser should 
automatically supply the close tag in the right place.  And a validator
is doing just that (actually tested with Webtechs).

Hey I'm not saying that it's a good idea to omit the </P>s - it probably 
helps catch all kinds of mistakes, and helps the pages pass validation
that way.  But once you have a valid documint, deleting all the </P>
_should_ give exactly the same result. (or not???)

There must be good reasons why Lynx is not doing it that way.  Maybe
the parser (inherited, after all, from the www library) is not up
to the task.  Or given the quality of many pages, it would make more 
pages unreadable that in would help.  Or maybe I should go to a search
engine, type in the magical right word(s), and read all about previous
iterations of this topic :)  
(I just assume that it must have occurred before.)

 Klaus



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