[Webkit-unassigned] [Bug 14634] New: Webkit ignores </span> tag when </p> tag is missing

[bugzilla-daemon at webkit.org]

http://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14634

           Summary: Webkit ignores </span> tag when </p> tag is missing
           Product: WebKit
           Version: 522+ (nightly)
          Platform: Macintosh
               URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi
                    =B6V2S-4K2SK38-
                    1&_user=10&_coverDate=12%2F31%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig
                    =search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlV
                    ersion=0&_userid=10&md5=32b8598f5846ca15bdf154507d2bfce5
        OS/Version: Mac OS X 10.4
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: Normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: Layout and Rendering
        AssignedTo: webkit-unassigned at lists.webkit.org
        ReportedBy: fripp at mac.com


(If the URL above breaks, this link should always redirect to the appropriate
page: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2006.03.016 )

Webkit (current and previous versions) appears to require that each <p> tag be
closed with a </p> tag when they occur inside a <span></span> pair. If a CSS
style is applied to a <span>, and an unclosed paragraph is included in this
span, the </span> tag after the paragraph is ignored, and the rest of the
document is formatted the same way as the text inside the <span></span> tags.
Other browsers recognize the </span> and revert to the main document
formatting, even if there is an unmatched <p> tag inside the span.

In the linked webpage, ScienceDirect (a major on-line academic publisher) omits
</p> tags in various places. The most important place is just after the article
title in the main body of the text (you can find it by searching for
articleTitle in the .html file). Because the </p> tag is omitted, Webkit
ignores the following </span> tag, and formats the rest of the document in the
same style as the article title. (If you manually insert a </p> right before
the </span> tag, Webkit will display the page correctly -- reverting to the
normal style for the rest of the document body.)

According to the XHTML standard, ScienceDirect should be closing all their
paragraphs with </p> tags, so it could be argued that this is their fault and
they need to clean up their HTML. However, the linked page does not claim to be
XHTML compliant, and earlier HTML standards did indeed allow for unclosed
paragraphs. So the choice of how this page should be rendered seems like a gray
area. As it is, this page seems like a valid example of somewhat outdated HTML,
which Webkit renders poorly. Can Webkit be changed to recognize a </span> tag
even if there is an unclosed <p> tag within the span?


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