Re: Add < /br> to Approved tags?

As people have pointed out: Adding "</br>" to a list of approved tags doesn't really make sense ... since it's not a tag, it's a missued closing tag. if you don't open a br, you can't close it.. and the site currently (and correctly) strips out uneeded closing tags -- warning you about them if you are viewing at the necessary HTML error reporting level

This smells like an X/Y problem discussion...

If the concern is "unsightly </br> instances showing up in posts", then perhaps the problem is not doing something auto-magically to fix them and guess what the author intended, but instead get the author to do what they ment to do correctly. Perhaps the questions to ask are:

Do we really need an "HTML error reporting during Preview" setting? Why not force people to preview at the highest possible error reporting level?
Why do we let people post content with malformed (ie: invalid or unclosed) tags? If the preview screen detects and reports on html errors, why not just report those errors in bright RED instead of light grey) and suppress the "create" button so they have to fix the errors and hit preview again?

Sure, people might *add* errors after previewing a valid post, or while updating an existing doc ... i'm not suggesting we give a 404 if they do click submit after entering malformed HTML ... but why not discourage it as much as (easily) possible?

Comment on Re: Add < /br> to Approved tags?

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Re^2: Add < /br> to Approved tags? (preview) by tye (Sage) on Jun 20, 2007 at 23:00 UTC
Do we really need an "HTML error reporting during Preview" setting? Why not force people to preview at the highest possible error reporting level? Um, the point of the "HTML error reporting during Preview" is that you can't set it very low. You only have two choices, "high" and "max". "Max" is only for pedants so there is no point in forcing it upon everyone. As I noted a while ago in this thread, I see the problem is that HTML nesting is not "on" for most node previews. So preventing people from prefering the non-pedant error reporting doesn't do any good if the whole feature set isn't even engaged for them. It'd also be good for the (higher) "preview" error reporting to apply when your own nodes are rendered. - tye	[reply]
Re^2: Add < /br> to Approved tags? by roboticus (Chancellor) on Jun 21, 2007 at 12:56 UTC
I agree--My current weak understanding of HTML is partially due to the fact that browsers are (IMO) too darned laid back about accepting incorrect input. I tend to pay attention to syntax (due to MUCH coding in ASM, C, C++), but only learn it by being hit over the head with error messages. If browsers were more strict, we'd have less crappy websites on the net. (And I'd be responsible for less crappy HTML in my projects!) While reading this thread, I noticed that there are some error-checking options in PM, so I've just cranked 'em up to the maximum. Maybe I'll finally learn the nuances of some tags! ...roboticus	[reply]