Re: [Moderator Action] Re: CfC: Close ISSUE-206: meta-generator by Amicable Resolution

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 11:49 AM, Michael[tm] Smith <mike@w3.org> wrote:
> Again, I wonder if instead what those tool developers are really wanting to
> silence is the case where dozens or hundreds of error messages are emitted,
> but yeah OK, understood.

I believe the key thing is whether the markup generator developer
thinks that the validator output reflects badly on the quality of the
generator in the eyes of ill-informed people who use validation as a
quick smoketest of generator quality. I expect any suggestion that the
output of the generator is "incomplete" to trigger the worry that the
validator output reflects badly on the quality of the generator in the
eyes of ill-informed people who use validation is a quick smoketest to
such a degree that some markup generator developers want to make said
validator output go away.

>   Make the default behavior be that of a document contains any instances of
>   img elements with the "incomplete" (or whatever) attribute, we have the
>   post-validation validator UI highlight the text of the "Show error
>   messages for img elements with 'incomplete' attributes." option --
>   instead of emitting an actual warning in the error-messages section).

It's hard to tell if there is a way of having the cake and eating it
too here. Any suggestion that there's something wrong with the page
can trigger the behavior in markup generator developers that causes
them to change the output of the generator such that the suggestion
that there's something wrong with the page is removed from the default
validator output. It might be possible to construct some sort of
"maybe you want to retry with image report enabled" mention in the
validator output so mildly that it doesn't trigger the market
generator developer behavior that tends proposal is trying to avoid
triggering, but it's really hard to guess if there's a level of
mildness (apart from total silence) that doesn't trigger the behavior.

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Thursday, 2 August 2012 09:30:47 UTC