id,summary,reporter,owner,description,type,status,priority,milestone,component,version,severity,resolution,keywords,cc
5161,balance_tags option should not be in the user interface,JeremyVisser,,"In the WP Admin → Options → Writing ({{{options-writing.php}}}), there is an option ""!WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically"" which controls whether {{{balance_tags()}}} is run on post content or not.

I'm fully supportive of this feature — I think it's important to ensure the HTML that is output to browsers is valid. There have been a few situations where users needed to turn this off, e.g. bugs in the function, or a plugin misbehaves with it on (if I remember correctly, runPHP).

However, this is a KDE-style option where it is put there for a niche case. In 99% of cases, you will want it on.

A few people on the mailing lists have stated a number of times that we should take a GNOME-like approach to these sort of features, and let them be controlled only by plugins. This option is left over from the dark ages of !WordPress, and I don't think the cases for turning it off are big enough to warrant its inclusion in the user interface.

If a plugin has a problem with balancing tags (e.g. runPHP), the offending plugin can simply remove the filter.

{{{
remove_filter('content_save_pre', 'balance_tags);
}}}

(...or whatever the code would be.)

The new canonical redirect feature has far more many problems, and far more justification for it to be turned off, yet I don't see a checkbox ""Redirect links to their canonical URL"" anywhere in the user interface. If anything should have a checkbox, it's the canonical redirect feature — but, it doesn't have any such thing. So, we should remove this checkbox as well.",enhancement,new,normal,Future Release,Formatting,2.3,normal,,needs-patch dev-feedback,