In article <3d342fad@news.povray.org>,
 "Chris Cason" <new### [at] deletethispovrayorg> wrote:
>In that case, the presence of a "</a>" is implied immediately after the <a 
>...>,
>simply because it can't be any other way. This is the way browsers have worked
>since the start, to my knowledge, and one that doesn't work that way is IMO
>broken (and I don't care what the standards say, it's broken).

No, this is not the way things have worked from the start, nor is it the 
way things should work now. Anchoring was originally expected to anchor 
text: the original GUI browser (Mosaic) would crash if a page tried to 
anchor nothing.

If you look in O'Reilly's HTML Definitive Guide, you'll see that their 
anchor examples enclose text. (see p. 197, section 6.3, of the fourth 
edition).

Anchoring around something is more useful for computer-oriented browsing 
than anchoring around nothing. I have used this in my own scripts in the 
past, and suspect other people have as well.

As we move away from anchoring with <a name="...">text</a> and towards 
anchoring via IDs in existing tags, most anchors will once again enclose 
text.

An anchor needs a closing tag in the same way as <em> and <strong> need 
closing tags. There isn't any "implied ending" except perhaps at the end 
of a paragraph-level tag.

Jerry
-- 
http://www.hoboes.com/jerry/
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, and you've
depleted the lake."--It Isn't Murder If They're Yankees
(http://www.hoboes.com/jerry/Murder/)

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