Re: questionable html constructs

Thomas A. Fine (fine@cis.ohio-state.edu)
Fri, 15 Jan 93 11:55:50 -0500


>We are finding the following situations in various HTML sources in the
>web (mostly as a result of automatically generated HTML, e.g. man
>pages), and, to put it mildly, it is confusing our browser and
>ourselves....
>
>... so quasi-authoritative answers (and corresponding cooperation from
>HTML providers) to these questions would be greatly appreciated.
>
>o What is the significance, if any, of <p>'s within a <pre> section?

They are allowed, but I don't know that they should be interpreted,
since the new-lines are also significant. I'd say that they should be
interpreted as ADDITIONAL line feeds; the people who set their code
up otherwise can just fix their html. Ideally, you'd want to realize
that there's a <P> with every new-line, and if so, ignore one or the
other. That's not really a legal treatment of SGML, but it should
produce nice results. Of course it encourages people not to fix
their HTML.

>o What is the significance, if any, of more than one <p> in a row,
> particularly on the same line? And, how about the same situation in
> a <pre> section?

It seems to be legal HTML, so I guess you just throw in a totally empty
paragraph.

>o Is '&lt' ('&lt;' without the semicolon) a valid construct?

No.

>o Can raw <'s and >'s be in a <pre> section?

No.