html_utils.py:clean_html() Remove alleged "fix" for </br> (#222)
html_utils.py:clean_html() Remove alleged "fix" for </br> (#222)

Stop converting </br> into <br/>

As noted in my comment in #219: https://github.com/freelawproject/juriscraper/pull/219/files/e92373e61b8751b9482bba8668aa41212f16f35c#r191602446

</br> is not the same as <br/>.

The only valid HTML choice is <br>.

In XML or XHTML, all tags need to be closed, so that is normally
<br/>, but sometimes <br /> and on much rarer occasions (but sometimes
seen in CMECF), it is <br></br>.

Transforming </br> into <br/> turns <br></br> into <br><br/> aka <br><br>.

That is, this transformation doubles each <br>, and thus doubles the
vertical space. That's especially troubling in appellate where a
double <br> is actually a semantic delimeter (in party parsing).

So anyhow, just cut it out.
freelawproject/juriscraper,freelawproject/juriscraper