Quote:
Originally Posted by ptm@xact.co.uk
Simply by parsing and committing an xhtml file, using the container, I see the following changes to the content.
Before parsing:
<span x="y"/>
<div id="w"/>
After committing:
<span x="y"></span>
<div id="w"></div>
Is there a 'tweak' setting or other method I can use to preserve the compact version of for tags with only attributes and no content? |
It's only historic accident that regular content tags can be self closing.
First line before opening <html>
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
Only inside <head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
<meta otherstuff />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css"/>
</head
Inside the <body >
Valid tags for ebooks that are self closing:
<hr />
<br />
<img src="whatever" alt="sometext"> and height & width should be via a class.
maybe <col /> to set properties of a table column, but tables in ebooks are tricky
</body>
An ebook isn't a web page, nor an XML application for a browser.
Such a setting in general is crazy.
These are not converted self closing tags, but tags with no content.
Code:
<span x="y"></span>
<div id="w"></div>
This is obsolete for empty tags:
Code:
<span x="y"/>
<div id="w"/>
As ebooks are "zipped", it saves nothing. Compact (as with clever C that should take 3 lines fitted as one statement) is not always a good idea.
Quote:
|
The HTML WG has discussed this issue: the intention was to allow old (HTML-only) browsers to accept XHTML 1.0 documents by following the guidelines,
|
So, yes, every browser will accept <div />, <span /> etc if the doc type allows it, but it's actually now wrong and totally inappropriate for ebooks.
mobi is HTML3
azw3 & epub2 is HTML5
epub3 is extended.
Here is a list of self closing tags for
web pages. The ones used in ebooks listed above and in bold. <col /> should be avoided in ebooks.
Code:
Name Description
< !DOCTYPE html> Special Case, never use a forward slash. Used to tell the browser what type of document you are using.
<br /> Used to create a breaking space on a page. Content following this tag will be moved to the next line in the browser.
<area /> Used for image mapping, making specified areas of an image clickable by associating a hyperlink
<base /> Creates a base url for all other hyperlinks on a given webpage so that relative urls can be used. The base element is placed inside the head.
<col /> This element represents a column or several columns in a column group
<command /> A multipurpose element for representing commands.
<hr /> Horizontal rule – creates a horizontal line across the page.
<embed /> Used to embed multimedia objects such as a video into a page.
<input /> This element allows a visitor to enter information such as username, password, email address etc…
<link /> Used to link external pages to a webpage such as external style sheets.
<wbr /> Word Break Opportunity. Specifies where in a line of text it would be OK to break into the next line on different screen sizes.
<track /> Used in conjunction with audio or video to add subtitle or caption tracks.
<meta /> A multipurpose element used to represent metadata. Metadata is information about data.
<param /> Defines parameters for object elements such as audio or video
<source /> Allows multiple media sources to be specified for audio and video elements.
<keygen /> Control used to generate a key pair (public – private) and allows the public key to be submitted to the user.
<img /> Image – Used to add images to a web page.
This isn't definitive.
However while <span /> <div /> etc can be legal in all browsers in web pages, I've never seen such in ebooks in 12 years and never used them in 30 years of web site editing.