22865 - Incomplete rendering of page with bad HTML

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Layout, defect, P3)

Description

[Matthew Mastracci]

I've noticed a problem rendering a page output from my ppmtohtml utility, which
converts a pixmap format image to an html page using <font color> tags.

Problem:

The above URL fails to render completely under the latest Mozilla builds.  The
browser displays about 15 lines of the image and then stops.

Expected Behaviour:

The page should render fully, as it does in IE and Netscape.

Possible cause:

The page is built up from a number of <font color="xxxxxx"> tags without closing
tags (this is done to save space).  I'm wondering if Mozilla runs out of space
for the nested tags and just barfs on the rest of the page.  There are no errors
in the console window and View Source outputs the entire page source.

I do admit that the HTML in this page is clearly violating the "close every tag"
rule, but shouldn't it still render properly?  Adding a closing font tag to
every opening <font color> tag is a possiblility, but this would dramatically
increase the size of the page.

What is Mozilla's stand on not properly rendering bad HTML?  Also, what is the
maximum allowable nesting depth for HTML tags?

Comment 1

[Matthew Mastracci]

I'll just add a few more URLs as examples:

http://www.grack.com/visuals/citrus.html
http://www.grack.com/visuals/tux.html

Comment 2

[troy]

Issue with the block code and how much stack space it uses. This ultimately
limits the depth of the frame model

Comment 3

[buster]

the max reflow depth is 500 levels of nested tags.  We can debate what the limit
ought to be if you wish, with recent optimizations in our stack usage I was
able to run at 1000 safely.
But the point is there will be a limit for the first release at least.  In later
releases we could play games with detecting the actual stack size and allowing
reflow to run it's course up to some % of available stack size, but it's too
late in the game to add code like that now.

Marking "WONTFIX", hopefully this will be addressed post first release.

Comment 4

[Chris Petersen]

Marking verified remind per last comments.

Comment 5

[Christopher Hoess (gone)]

REMIND is deprecated per bug 35839.

Comment 6

[Christopher Hoess (gone)]

HTML spec limits tag depth to 100 tags.  WONTFIX.