Re: [xsl] Understanding why <tag></tag> is the way it is (was Re: [xsl] IE Client side transformation issue)

[Abel Braaksma <abel.online@xxxxxxxxx>]

David Carlisle wrote:
> >  Isn't this part of the HTML spec?  I realize that its a bit 
> > silly that not using a closing script element breaks the page
> >     
>
> that's what the HTML spec would demand, so this behaviour doesn't seem
> silly to me. remember in html script is a CDATA eleemnt so it turns off
> < and & as being special characters and normal processing only begins
> after the literal string </script appears. So ypu can't omit the end tag.

I should not mention HTML when I mean XHTML, sorry for the confusion.

This is rather interesting, because in XHTML <script> has become a 
PCDATA element. Which means, IIRC, that < and & should be escaped. Which 
is why in XHTML it is recommended to put the data of a script tag into a 
<[CDATA[ section, so you don't have to worry too much about all these 
escaping. In XSLT you can do this by setting the xsl:output attribute of 
cdata-section-elements to "script".

Cheers,
-- Abel Braaksma