[icedtea-web] RFC: More javadoc fixes for Java 8

[Jacob Wisor]

On 05/12/2014 03:34 PM Omair Majid wrote:
> * Jacob Wisor <gitne at gmx.de> [2014-05-09 22:07]:
>> On 5/10/2014 2:14 AM Omair Majid wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I recently tried compiling icedtea-web with java 8 and ran into more
>>> javadoc issues. Apparently, self-enclosing tags (<br/>) are now not
>>> allowed either.
>>
>> Self-enclosing elements are actually required by the XML specification,
>> hence also by XHTML. Please do not remove them.
>
> But they are rejected by the javadoc compiler in OpenJDK 8. Since we are
> now moving towards OpenJDK 7 and OpenJDk 8-support not being able to
> build everything with OpenJDK 8 seems like a showstopper. Is there a
> reason you want to keep the self-enclosing elements (aside from being
> valid XHTML)?

Please read my message <5370C9E4.7000607 at gmx.de> for this. Standards compliance 
is my main motivation.

I was hoping javadoc would have finally moved to XHTML since OpenJDK 8, but 
unfortunately progress has been a bit of a pain for Java during the last few 
years. :-\

As I mentioned earlier, your patch is not wrong but it fixes problems that will 
or might become a problem themselves when javadoc finally transitions to XHTML. 
I think, I do not need to elaborate on the human *and* machine readability 
benefits of XML here, so this is mainly why I would like every javadoc source 
code out there to be prepared for that transition.

If self-enclosing elements are stopping OpenJDK 8 javadoc from digesting that 
Java source code documentation then I would rather assume javadoc needs to be 
fixed. And evidently, the time has come to give back javadoc the attention it 
requires, since it has been neglected for so many years.

Jacob