I just caught a reference to Arve Bersvendsen’s EvilML file. What is it? It’s an HTML document designed to make use of the fact that HTML is, technically, SGML, which has all kinds of strange shortcuts you can use. Of course, no one has ever bothered to make a web browser that actually handles all these shortcuts.
It’s hard to describe it. The code is barely readable. The first line of text looks like this: <body<h1<em>Emphasized</> in <h1></>. No browser in existence is likely to display it correctly, and yet — amazingly enough — it validates…
I already thought that moving to the more rigidly-defined XHTML was a good idea, but suddenly it makes a lot more sense!
