writing JavaDoc-> Re: RFR: 8046443 : A few typos in JAXP JavaDoc

huizhe wang huizhe.wang at oracle.com
Wed Jun 18 16:34:45 UTC 2014 

Thanks Stuart for the good discussion. It reminds us that optional tags 
may be not optional since we're writing Doc Comments that will become 
part of the spec and affect overall look of it.

The issues you pointed out below may be true generally when writing <p> 
tag in a html file. However, we're talking about the JavaDoc here. The 
Doc Comments consist of two parts: a description followed by block tags. 
The JavaDoc tool will put the description in a <div> block, so no 
content will be outside of the block. (the block tags will be in 
Description List <dl> by the way). In Doc Comments, a <p> tag serves 
only to separate paragraphs.

As for clutter, you probably hate xml then :-)  I consider html tags are 
generally short and tidy. But again, it's preference, if no </p> is the 
norm, I'll do the same.

-Joe

On 6/17/2014 3:38 PM, Stuart Marks wrote:
> On 6/16/14 9:33 PM, huizhe wang wrote:
>> It's not xhmtl, but I would think closing tags is a good practice. Being
>> explicit is always a good thing to do.
>
> Being explicit sounds good, but in this case it leads to errors; see 
> below.
>
>>> The problem with using the </p> end tag is that it's easy for 
>>> additional
>>> textual content to slip in afterward. This text would end up as part 
>>> of the
>>> parent element. This might result in its being styled incorrectly or 
>>> otherwise
>>> treated inconsistently with the rest of the text.
>>
>> That seems to be an argument for a closing tag. When a style is 
>> specified for
>> <p>, closing tag makes it clear where exactly it would be applied -- 
>> it's
>> content inside paragraphs, not the whole <body>. If there's anything 
>> "slipped"
>> outside of the P tags, it would be an error.
>
> If content slips outside of a <p> element, it's indeed an error. (*1) 
> But it's almost impossible for this to happen if you omit the </p> end 
> tag. If one doesn't use </p> end tags, the <p> element can only be 
> implicitly closed by a) closing its enclosing element, e.g., <div>; or 
> b) by starting a new block-level element such as a <div>, <h1>, etc., 
> or another <p> element. With this approach the text is always (*2) 
> going to be within some block-level element.
>
> By contrast, if one were to use </p> end tags, there is the 
> possibility between every paragraph for text to appear, which means 
> that it would be outside of any paragraph element. The use of </p> end 
> tags creates this possibility, and thus this increases the possibility 
> of error.
>
> *1 - not an error in the sense of being a syntax error, or one that 
> javadoc would warn or raise an error about, but a semantic error in 
> that text would occur in an inappropriate place in the document 
> structure.
>
> *2 - well, not always. It's possible for text to be outside of any 
> block element at the very beginning of the element, such as after 
> <body> but before the first <p> or other block-level element.
>
>>> For example, I happened to notice the following in one of the files 
>>> in the
>>> patch, jaxp/src/javax/xml/namespace/QName.java:
>>
>> In this example, I think it was intentional by the author to add the 
>> closing tag
>> to separate the paragraphs, otherwise he would have to add another 
>> <p> before
>> <code>.
>>
>>>      * <p>To workaround this issue, serialVersionUID is set with either
>>>      * a default value or a compatibility value.  To use the
>>>      * compatibility value, set the system property:</p>
>>>      *
>>>      * 
>>> <code>com.sun.xml.namespace.QName.useCompatibleSerialVersionUID=1.0</code>
>>>      *
>>>      * <p>This workaround was inspired by classes in the 
>>> javax.management
>>>      * package, e.g. ObjectName, etc.
>>>
>>> Note that the text enclosed in the <code> element is outside of any 
>>> paragraph.
>>> If the style sheet were to have a distinct style for code appearing 
>>> within a
>>> paragraph, that style wouldn't apply to the text in this example.
>
> I'm not sure what the author's intent was, but it looks like a mistake 
> to me. The problem is that <code> is an inline element and can appear 
> within a <p> or other block element. Unlike block elements, an inline 
> element doesn't implicitly close a <p> element. The author might have 
> thought that <code> itself was a block element and thus didn't need to 
> be enclosed by a block element, but this isn't the case.
>
> What's probably necessary here is for the text within <code> to be 
> enclosed within a block element, such as <p>, <blockquote>, or <pre>.
>
>> with css, <code> would have its own style.
>
> It does, but it's possible for the style sheet to have styles for 
> descendant (enclosed) elements, or for styles to inherit properties 
> from enclosing elements. For example, a style sheet might have these 
> declarations:
>
>     p code { blag bleg blig; }
>     pre code { bazz bizz buzz; }
>
> This would style <code> text differently within <p> elements from 
> <code> text within <pre> elements. But these declarations would miss 
> the <code> text from
> QName.java, because it doesn't occur within these elements.
>
> * * *
>
> Now, this really is moot, since the offending example is on a private 
> field that will almost never get rendered, the stylesheet doesn't in 
> fact use that style of CSS selector, and the prevailing style of the 
> javadoc in this area is to use </p> end tags. It's probably not worth 
> it to go in and remove all the end tags, and it's certainly not worth 
> it if we're taking code from upstream somewhere that is already 
> marked-up this way. So don't consider this to be a proposal or an 
> exhortation to clean out all the </p> end tags.
>
> But if you're writing new javadoc, I recommend that you not use </p> 
> end tags.
>
> (Also, as Roger pointed out, they add clutter.)
>
> s'marks
>
>
>
>>
>>>
>>> It turns out that this text is from a private field in the QName class
>>> (serialVersionUID) so it's usually not rendered anyway, but I'd 
>>> guess that
>>> there are other places where text has accidentally ended up outside of
>>> paragraph elements because a paragraph end tag was used and a 
>>> paragraph start
>>> tag (or block start tag) was missing.
>>>
>>> </pedantry>
>>>
>>> s'marks
>>>
>>> P.S. Note that the start tag for the <pedantry> element is optional 
>>> and is
>>> implied by context.
>>
>> haha, <pedantry> can be put to good use in our writings :-)
>>
>> -Joe
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 6/11/14 10:49 AM, huizhe wang wrote:
>>>> And, here is a good discussion on closing tags:
>>>>
>>>> http://webdesign.about.com/od/htmltags/qt/optional-html-end-tags-when-to-include-them.htm 
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -Joe
>>>>
>>>> On 6/11/2014 10:24 AM, Lance Andersen wrote:
>>>>> Hi Joe,
>>>>>
>>>>> </p>  is what I am talking about.
>>>>>
>>>>> On the myriad of clean-ups that were needed to be done in JDBC, 
>>>>> getting rid of
>>>>> these type of <p>blah</p> blocks was needed and just use <p>
>>>>>
>>>>> Best
>>>>> Lance
>>>>> On Jun 11, 2014, at 1:20 PM, huizhe wang <huizhe.wang at oracle.com
>>>>> <mailto:huizhe.wang at oracle.com>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 6/11/2014 9:48 AM, Lance Andersen wrote:
>>>>>>> Hi Joe,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> please change
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> dont
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> to
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>  don't
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Oops, I committed too quickly.  But this is a dev comment, so we 
>>>>>> can fix that
>>>>>> in the next patch.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I would get rid of the <p></p>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Guide[1] for JavaDoc Tool suggests using <p> to separate paragraphs:
>>>>>> If you have more than one paragraph in the doc comment, separate the
>>>>>> paragraphs with a |<p>|paragraph tag, as shown.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [1]
>>>>>> http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/documentation/index-137868.html 
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -Joe
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> otherwise it is OK
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Best
>>>>>>> Lance
>>>>>>> On Jun 11, 2014, at 11:54 AM, huizhe wang <huizhe.wang at oracle.com
>>>>>>> <mailto:huizhe.wang at oracle.com>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Fix some typos in the JAXP documentation.  Please review.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~joehw/jdk9/8046443/webrev/
>>>>>>>> <http://cr.openjdk.java.net/%7Ejoehw/jdk9/8046443/webrev/>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>>>> Joe
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> <Mail Attachment.gif>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Lance Andersen| Principal Member of Technical Staff | 
>>>>>>> +1.781.442.2037
>>>>>>> Oracle Java Engineering
>>>>>>> 1 Network Drive
>>>>>>> Burlington, MA 01803
>>>>>>> <http://oracle.com/us/design/oracle-email-sig-198324.gif>Lance.Andersen at oracle.com 
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> <mailto:Lance.Andersen at oracle.com>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Lance Andersen| Principal Member of Technical Staff | +1.781.442.2037
>>>>> Oracle Java Engineering
>>>>> 1 Network Drive
>>>>> Burlington, MA 01803
>>>>> <http://oracle.com/us/design/oracle-email-sig-198324.gif>Lance.Andersen at oracle.com 
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> <mailto:Lance.Andersen at oracle.com>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>

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