Lack of end tag messes up form styling - a known bug?

[Jukka K. Korpela]

My basic style sheet has a distinctive background and border for forms,
to make the structure clearer and to make it visually evident what
belongs to a form.

However, as people complained that some forms were odd-looking, I
noticed that indeed, fairly often the background is not applied and
there is empty space inside a form I didn't ask for. This was rather
puzzling until I realized that the observed cases seem to result from
one single "error" in my markup.

The "error" is lack of the "optional" </ptag right before a form. That
is,
<p>paragraph text
<form ...>
causes the trouble. For a simple illustration, check

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/test/form.html

on IE 7. (When </pis omitted, the background set for the form is not
there, except for a thin stripe at the top.)

For years, browsers have been reported to behave wrongly when "optional"
end tags for elements are omitted. But this form-related problem appears
even on IE 7, and I don't remember having seen notes about this
particular type of bug elsewhere. What did I miss?

My conclusion is that "optional" end tags should not be omitted. There
is little hope of having browsers fixed, I'm afraid. What we _can_ do is
to stop using "handy" SGML features like tag omissibility.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[David Stone]

Re: Lack of end tag messes up form styling - a known bug?

In article <5gmLj.324043$e T7.60746@reader 1.news.saunalah ti.fi>,
"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fiwrote:

My basic style sheet has a distinctive background and border for forms,
to make the structure clearer and to make it visually evident what
belongs to a form.
>
However, as people complained that some forms were odd-looking, I
noticed that indeed, fairly often the background is not applied and
there is empty space inside a form I didn't ask for. This was rather
puzzling until I realized that the observed cases seem to result from
one single "error" in my markup.
>
The "error" is lack of the "optional" </ptag right before a form. That
is,
<p>paragraph text
<form ...>
causes the trouble. For a simple illustration, check

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/test/form.html

on IE 7. (When </pis omitted, the background set for the form is not
there, except for a thin stripe at the top.)
>
For years, browsers have been reported to behave wrongly when "optional"
end tags for elements are omitted. But this form-related problem appears
even on IE 7, and I don't remember having seen notes about this
particular type of bug elsewhere. What did I miss?
>
My conclusion is that "optional" end tags should not be omitted. There
is little hope of having browsers fixed, I'm afraid. What we _can_ do is
to stop using "handy" SGML features like tag omissibility.

I've run into this a couple of times, and usually it has to do with
the way a specific user agent infers where the missing end tag
should be, based on the content of the html file. (In my case,
however, it had nothing to do with forms.)

I've noticed on a couple of occasions that the W3C validator picks
up on these things, and will explicitly state what it has decided
to do when encountering a missing optional end tag; this choice is
rarely what I meant! But then, I am not as familiar with the full
scope of the html spec as the authors of the validator software...

The upshot is that, for purely practical reasons, I always include
"optional" end tags

[Harlan Messinger]

Re: Lack of end tag messes up form styling - a known bug?

David Stone wrote:

I've run into this a couple of times, and usually it has to do with
the way a specific user agent infers where the missing end tag
should be, based on the content of the html file. (In my case,
however, it had nothing to do with forms.)

It should be easy to check what the UA has inferred by using some
Javascript to report on the DOM tree. Does the tree differ depending on
whether or not the end tag is there?

[Jonathan N. Little]

Re: Lack of end tag messes up form styling - a known bug?

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

My basic style sheet has a distinctive background and border for forms,
to make the structure clearer and to make it visually evident what
belongs to a form.
>
However, as people complained that some forms were odd-looking, I
noticed that indeed, fairly often the background is not applied and
there is empty space inside a form I didn't ask for. This was rather
puzzling until I realized that the observed cases seem to result from
one single "error" in my markup.
>
The "error" is lack of the "optional" </ptag right before a form. That
is,
<p>paragraph text
<form ...>
causes the trouble. For a simple illustration, check

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/test/form.html

on IE 7. (When </pis omitted, the background set for the form is not
there, except for a thin stripe at the top.)
>

Strangely it does display correctly in IE 4-6 And folks wonder why I am
cynical about future IE8's compliance.

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO

http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

[Darin McGrew]

Re: Lack of end tag messes up form styling - a known bug?

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fiwrote:

My conclusion is that "optional" end tags should not be omitted. There
is little hope of having browsers fixed, I'm afraid. What we _can_ do is
to stop using "handy" SGML features like tag omissibility.

David Stone <no.email@domai n.invalidwrote:

The upshot is that, for purely practical reasons, I always include
"optional" end tags

Same here. For a while now, I've been using spam/ospam to add optional
closing tags (and optional quotes around attribute values). It helps
browsers (and browser-like OS components) handle CSS more consistently.
--
Darin McGrew, mcgrew@stanford alumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, darin@htmlhelp. com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/

"Advice is what you ask for when you know the answer but wish you didn't."

[David Stone]

Re: Lack of end tag messes up form styling - a known bug?

In article <666ervF2il78eU 2@mid.individua l.net>,
Harlan Messinger <hmessinger.rem ovethis@comcast .netwrote:

David Stone wrote:

I've run into this a couple of times, and usually it has to do with
the way a specific user agent infers where the missing end tag
should be, based on the content of the html file. (In my case,
however, it had nothing to do with forms.)

>
It should be easy to check what the UA has inferred by using some
Javascript to report on the DOM tree. Does the tree differ depending on
whether or not the end tag is there?

I don't know, I don't do Javascript. Might be interesting to
see what FireBug does with things like that. As I said in the
original post, however, I just explicitly include all "optional"
end tags anyway, so the point is moot.

[VK]

Re: Lack of end tag messes up form styling - a known bug?

On Apr 10, 2:48 pm, "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp...@cs.tu t.fiwrote:

The "error" is lack of the "optional" </ptag right before a form.

The P element is being changed from the original paragraph separator
to a block element back in HTML 3.2 or even earlier if I recall
properly. The last time I saw P used as a paragraph separator on the
Web is about 1997-98, so your sample is the first in over ten years.
What actuality do you actually imply by your case?

[Joost Diepenmaat]

Re: Lack of end tag messes up form styling - a known bug?

VK <schools_ring@y ahoo.comwrites:

On Apr 10, 2:48 pm, "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp...@cs.tu t.fiwrote:

>The "error" is lack of the "optional" </ptag right before a form.

>
The P element is being changed from the original paragraph separator
to a block element back in HTML 3.2 or even earlier if I recall
properly. The last time I saw P used as a paragraph separator on the
Web is about 1997-98, so your sample is the first in over ten years.
What actuality do you actually imply by your case?

Not so fast. From the HTML 4.01 specs,

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/text.html#edef-P

9.3.1 Paragraphs: the P element

<!ELEMENT P - O (%inline;)* -- paragraph -->
<!ATTLIST P
%attrs; -- %coreattrs, %i18n, %events --

>

Start tag: required, End tag: optional

Note the last word. Now, since FORM is a block-level element, it should
AFAICT close a P tag, since a P tag cannot contain another block-level
element. Please also note that because of all kinds of inconsistencies ,
I agree (if that's your point) that it's far more worth-while to just
close all damn tags appropriately, even if that's "optional" and focus
on what issues are left.

--
Joost Diepenmaat | blog: http://joost.zeekat.nl/ | work: http://zeekat.nl/

[VK]

Re: Lack of end tag messes up form styling - a known bug?

On Apr 11, 1:23 am, Joost Diepenmaat <jo...@zeekat.n lwrote:

VK <schools_r...@y ahoo.comwrites:

On Apr 10, 2:48 pm, "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp...@cs.tu t.fiwrote:

The "error" is lack of the "optional" </ptag right before a form.

>

The P element is being changed from the original paragraph separator
to a block element back in HTML 3.2 or even earlier if I recall
properly. The last time I saw P used as a paragraph separator on the
Web is about 1997-98, so your sample is the first in over ten years.
What actuality do you actually imply by your case?

>
Not so fast. From the HTML 4.01 specs,http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/text.html#edef-P
>
9.3.1 Paragraphs: the P element
>
<!ELEMENT P - O (%inline;)* -- paragraph -->
<!ATTLIST P
%attrs; -- %coreattrs, %i18n, %events --

>

>
Start tag: required, End tag: optional

I did not mean that it is wrong. I am well aware of "P issue" and
explained it several times at ciwah - where this issue is better
suited IMO - see for instance

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html/msg/1a1685c07c06d971

I am just saying that no one ever widely used it even at the time when
P was officially a paragraph break and not a container - except some
really amateurish pages. So making an issue out of it now is kind of
checking XMP or ISINDEX tag support amidst modern browsers.

IMHO

[VK]

Re: Lack of end tag messes up form styling - a known bug?

On Apr 11, 2:07 am, VK <schools_r...@y ahoo.comwrote:

I am just saying that no one ever widely used it even at the time when
P was officially a paragraph break and not a container - except some
really amateurish pages.

"no one ever widely used it" refers to the "permission " to omit the
closing tag, not to P element itself, of course.

[Bergamot]

Re: Lack of end tag messes up form styling - a known bug?

VK wrote:

>
The P element is being changed from the original paragraph separator
to a block element back in HTML 3.2 or even earlier if I recall
properly.

Huh? What is this "paragraph separator" you speak of? If it is in fact
<p>, that is and always has been a block element.

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1866.html

Go to section 5.5

The last time I saw P used as a paragraph separator on the
Web is about 1997-98,

If you aren't using <pto mark up paragraphs, what pray tell *are* you
using?

--
Berg

[VK]

Re: Lack of end tag messes up form styling - a known bug?

On Apr 11, 2:19 am, Bergamot <berga...@visi. comwrote:

Huh? What is this "paragraph separator" you speak of? If it is in fact
<p>, that is and always has been a block element.

No offense, but you were too young that time to remember I guess.
Initially there were paragraph break P (with adding space between
lines) and BR (w/o adding space). And numerous manual suggestions to
still "use </Pdespite it is meaningless now because the meaning of
this element should change and hopefully will change soon".

Please read the linked post at

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html/msg/1a1685c07c06d971

- it is boring to answer such FAQ over and over again.

[Joost Diepenmaat]

Re: Lack of end tag messes up form styling - a known bug?

VK <schools_ring@y ahoo.comwrites:

On Apr 11, 2:07 am, VK <schools_r...@y ahoo.comwrote:

>I am just saying that no one ever widely used it even at the time when
>P was officially a paragraph break and not a container - except some
>really amateurish pages.

>
"no one ever widely used it" refers to the "permission " to omit the
closing tag, not to P element itself, of course.

I don't think that's true, but that depends on your definition of
"amateurish ". Not having to close some tags makes it easier to write
HTML by hand, and besides, it's not a '"permission "', it's *explicitely
allowed*. That's not to say that this kind of implicit closing can't
lead to all kinds of problems, but AFAICT that's mostly an
implementation issue...

--
Joost Diepenmaat | blog: http://joost.zeekat.nl/ | work: http://zeekat.nl/

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: Lack of end tag messes up form styling - a known bug?

Scripsit Joost Diepenmaat:

VK <schools_ring@y ahoo.comwrites:
>

>On Apr 11, 2:07 am, VK <schools_r...@y ahoo.comwrote:

>>I am just saying that no one ever widely used it even at the time
>>when P was officially a paragraph break and not a container -
>>except some really amateurish pages.

>>
>"no one ever widely used it" refers to the "permission " to omit the
>closing tag, not to P element itself, of course.

>
I don't think that's true, but that depends on your definition of
"amateurish ".

I'm afraid you just have to learn to ignore "VK" as many people
presumably do. "VK" is apparently not even an amateur in HTML matters
but this does not prevent her, him, or it from posting opinions and
advice on them.

(P was _never_ officially a paragraph break. The first HTML
specification was HTML 2.0, and it clearly defines P as an element
indicating a paragraph. I don't think "VK" even ever read an HTML
specification.)

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Ben Bacarisse]

Re: Lack of end tag messes up form styling - a known bug?

Bergamot <bergamot@visi. comwrites:

VK wrote:

>>
>The P element is being changed from the original paragraph separator
>to a block element back in HTML 3.2 or even earlier if I recall
>properly.

>
Huh? What is this "paragraph separator" you speak of? If it is in fact
<p>, that is and always has been a block element.

Tim Berners-Lee original HTML 1.0 DTD declared P elements to be empty.
Thus, for a very short time, </Pwas not valid syntax. The draft
(never even made it to RFC) calls it a "paragraph separator".

--
Ben.