gmiller - 5:53 am on Jan 14, 2001 (gmt 0)

The W3C provides a small utility called "HTMLtidy" that can clean things up for you. It makes sure your elements are closed properly, etc. As I recall, it also converts SGML-based HTML to XML-based HTML in valid XHTML 1.0 form, but it's been a while since I looked at that utility. Unfortunately, I don't have an URL handy for it, I just remember that it was on the W3C's site.

Anyway, HTML itself is no more or less lenient than the markup system it's based on. If it's XML-based, you have to play by XML rules. If it's SGML-based, you have to play by SGML rules. If it's being run through an ad-hoc Mosaic-style parser, you have to guess the rules by trial and error. I look forward to the day when 98% or more of users have a browser with XHTML 1.0 or higher support so that I can just write XML and trust it to be parsed correctly. Too bad that'll be a while.