Empty anchor

John Franks (john@math.nwu.edu)
Mon, 12 Sep 1994 16:43:47 -0500 (CDT)

I recall the issue of empty anchors having been discussed some time
ago but I don't remember the conclusions if any.

The problem is that named anchors like

<a name="something"></a>

do not work in some well known browsers. It is necessary to
have some text between the <a name..> and the </a>. There are
situations when this is not very convenient.

I have several questions:

1. Is the empty anchor legal HTML?

2. If so is it a bug in Mosaic or libwww that causes it to fail?
Will it be fixed?

3. Is <a name="something"> alone legal, i.e. without the </a> ?

I ask #3 because it seems illegal to me, but I notice it being
used quite commonly because it does work and has the desired effect.

I guess the point is that there is a need for the empty anchor.
If it isn't allowed or is broken and some illegal construct
works then we will have a lot of bad HTML out there.

John Franks Dept of Math. Northwestern University
john@math.nwu.edu