Scott quotes from some apparently [HT|X]ML-ish Squid or Apache config file:

<Location />
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Location>

Is everybody just inventing their own syntax with <s and >s in it nowadays because the Web is so "in", or is this supposed to be some actual standard markup language...?[*] I mean, I know many apps nowadays keep their config files in XML format[+], so if this is from Squid or Apache[#], I would have thought that this was XML...

But if it is that, then WTH is up with that opening "<Location />" tag? Specifically, the "/" slash just before the ending ">" character -- I thought that was supposed to be used only for "self-ending" tags; i.e, tags that don't affect a chunk of text up to a corresponding closing tag, like in this case, the "</Location>" tag. That's why they moved the closing-tag signifier, the "/" slash, to the opening tag in the fricking first place, innit?

And, my point -- my real point, I suppose, if we really get down to it, is this: If one can use this newfangled "self-ending tag" syntax even when the tag obviously doesn't end immediately... Then one can apparently use it everywhere... So then it's in effect just the same as the ordinary old-fashioned non-"self-ending" tag syntax -- so the new shtuff apparently makes absolutely no fricking difference, does it?

Way to go, oh Creator Deities Of Markup Syntax.

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[*]: If you don't grok this question, refresh this page until you get that LRPDism about rhetorical ones.

[+]: A possibly somewhat dubious decision in and of itself, IMO, but that's not the subject of this post.

[#]: Sorry, I'm not even clear on which of them this is from -- but that doesn't matter to my point here.