Add an option to prefer void tags over self closing tags.

Update:

I have change my opinion on this, and I don’t think I require this any more. If this is ever implemented I would probably use it, but I really don’t mind this behavior at all. If you want to read more, I wrote a post in dev.to

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Original post:

Prettier 1.14.3 Playground link

# Options (if any):

Input:

<input type="button">

Output:

<input type="button" />

Expected behavior: I would like an option to prefer void element tags over the current implementation of self-closing element tags. I understand why is this the default behavior, as this is xml compatible, but several style guides suggest the usage of void tags as they are valid HTML5 tags. As I understand in the option philosophy, if there is enough usage from developers there is a justification to add the option.

Style Guides:

• https://google.github.io/styleguide/htmlcssguide.html#Document_Type
• http://codeguide.co/#html-syntax
• http://www.codestyle.co/Guidelines/html
• https://github.com/gocardless/html-style-guide

# Options:
--prefer-void-tags=true

<input type="button">

[alexander-akait]

I don’t think we need option. I think we should print this as in source code, i.e. if you have <input type="button" /> print this as is.

Why:

1. Compatibility with XHTML.
2. It is out of scope prettier, here should be used linter to avoid HTML errors.

[oles]

I went even deeper.

When searching for “html style guide” and “html best practice”, these were the serious results (and I am not nit-picking):

https://google.github.io/styleguide/htmlcssguide.html#Document_Type https://contribute.jquery.org/style-guide/html/ https://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_syntax.asp https://github.com/hail2u/html-best-practices#dont-mix-empty-element-format https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MDN/Guidelines/Code_guidelines/HTML

and none of them use self-closing tags.

Even the same doc specifying it as valid doesn’t use it: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/syntax.html#attributes-2

Furthering my case of it being a weird thing to do.

Surely this is unexpected for beginners and whoever just trying out prettier. It sure was for me.

And surely the cost of this disruption, beginners and alike, is greater than to support XML / XHTML? Is there any point of XHTML nowadays?

It seems to me like it should be an option to have the old XML / XHTML behaviour, as it seems to be this way due to “because of history” and “compatibility reasons”, as said in the options philosophy.

It is also the third highest upvoted html issue now, if that has any weight.