Re: Support Existing Content

On 4 May 2007, at 09:52, Gareth Hay wrote:

> On 4 May 2007, at 08:44, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>
>>>>
>>> Do you honestly think that by encouraging people to write more  
>>> correct code is not a help to anyone?
>>
>> To answer for myself: yes, I think encouraging people to write  
>> conforming content is somewhat helpful (though less so than  
>> encouraging them to actually test in multiple browsers). But I do  
>> not think /forcing/ people to write conforming content is a help  
>> to anyone, especially if author mistakes then become problems for  
>> the end user. And when we are talking about draconian error  
>> handling to the point of refusing to render, we're talking about  
>> forcing, not encouraging.
>>
>> So I'd say that I don't think "pro-actively fix[ing]" the web is a  
>> help to anyone, if that is taken to mean an attempt to force  
>> conformance.
>>
>> What's your answer?
>>
> I think that the situation we have just now is untenable. I don't  
> think any form of (your definition) encouragement is going to work,  
> after all, people have been pretty much free to go your way for  
> years and haven't, so let's try (my definition) encouraging them a  
> different way, which prevents them from getting things wrong.
>
> [aside: maybe it's because I grew up with "Segmentation Fault"  
> fatal errors that I don't see that kind of error handling as "wrong"]

To write from the end user POV: What is a segmentation fault? What's  
segmented?

> I think "draconian" error handling leads to a much more educated  
> author.
> Doesn't  "Parse error : line 5" - tell you all you need to know?

What's "parse" mean on a computer sense?

> I certainly wouldn't be to adverse to
> 	 "This page was written as HTML5, but it is invalid. Error is 'non- 
> conformity - line 5'. Do you want to try this as html4?"

Conformity to what?

> Where the browser will attempt to render the page minus the html5  
> doctype declaration.

 From my POV: In quirks mode then? What if the page relies on the W3C  
CSS Box Model? Why are we wasting CPU and memory of parsing something  
twice?


- Geoffrey Sneddon

Received on Friday, 4 May 2007 09:54:45 UTC