addParbreak, display:inline

I was looking at why the page numbers at the bottom of a startpage
search results page aren't visible.

It seems that the numbers are forms with display:inline.

open_form has HT2TB(html)->addParbreak (9, html->wordStyle ());

Am I correct in thinking that the assorted addParbreak()s have to come
out at some point for display to work, or is there some other plan?

I note that the html5 spec has:
"In quirks mode, the following rules are also expected to apply:
...
form { margin-bottom: 1em; }"
to provide the gap in this case.