In a tree you have branches off branches off branches etc.
You can’t orient yourself - you can’t tell where you are - unless you count the branches. And indenting makes that visible.
In the examples for TFA, you can tell your location from the names of the elements. Eg <td> is enough for you to know you’re probably inside a tr inside a table.
And that is the more common case than the general tree example.
But a method of describing html does have to answer the question of how it represents arbitrarily deep nesting. But I like the answers it’s given for the more common case of structures that are not arbitrarily deep.
In turn, probably descended from “RTFM”—on Slashdot people who commented despite obviously not having read the article were told to “RTFA,” which eventually led to “TFA” as a general term to refer to the original article.
You can’t orient yourself - you can’t tell where you are - unless you count the branches. And indenting makes that visible.
In the examples for TFA, you can tell your location from the names of the elements. Eg <td> is enough for you to know you’re probably inside a tr inside a table.
And that is the more common case than the general tree example.
But a method of describing html does have to answer the question of how it represents arbitrarily deep nesting. But I like the answers it’s given for the more common case of structures that are not arbitrarily deep.