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RE: What is Tag Soup?

• To: <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: What is Tag Soup?
• From: "Jelks Cabaniss" <jelks@j...>
• Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 16:53:14 -0400
• Importance: Normal
• In-reply-to: <5.1.0.14.0.20021011103629.0393bfd8@p...>

G. Ken Holman wrote:

> At 2002-10-11 07:19 -0700, Dave Winer wrote:
> >What is Tag Soup?

"HTML" -- as practised by most (from Joe Homepager to Fortune 500).

> I have used this term in my instruction for years to
> characterize the jumble of angle brackets acting like tags
> in HTML in pages that are accepted by browsers.  Improper
> minimization, overlapping constructs ... stuff that looks
> like SGML markup but the creator didn't know or respect SGML
> rules for the HTML vocabulary.  In effect a soupy collection
> of text and markup.

... usually for visual effects in typical desktop graphical browsers.
It can also be well-formed -- a number of "HTML" editors do this when
you press the "indent" button several times:

  <blockquote>
    <blockquote>
      <blockquote>
        This ain't no quote, but it's indented good,
        ain't it?
      </blockquote>
    </blockquote>
  </blockquote>

Cheap FOs.

> I've never seen the term defined anywhere.

It was first mentioned on Usenet in December, '95 by Arjun Ray
(according to Google Groups.)  Three years before -- December, '92 --
Dan Connolly wrote this to Tim Berners-Lee:

      ...
    I'm just about to give up on the structure business. Do any
    implementations have problems with <TITLE> elements in the
    middle of the document? If not, I can just change the DTD so
    that HTML is just "tag soup" -- anything goes anywhere.
      ...


/Jelks

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