Re: Validators that don't validate (continued)

Yes, it's true that the validator shouldn't be criticized for being "overly
strict", but there's another point they also make, that the error messages
are cryptic:

When tag attributes aren't surrounded by quotes, W3C reports
"An attribute value must be a literal unless it contains only name
characters." Ampersands in URLs (technically a no-no, though
quite common) are met with cryptic "General entity not defined"
reports.

Len


At 11:25 AM 11/14/98 GMT, Nir Dagan wrote:
>I think we should very well explain to the public 
>why these guys are wrong:
>
>http://webbuilder.netscape.com/Authoring/HtmlValid/ss06.html
>
>To make a long story short, they claim that real validators are
>bad because they find errors that other "validators" let them get 
>away with. They say its bad because "both" Netscape and 
>explorer "support" these errors (invalid nestings, not escaped 
>ampresands in URLs, unquoted attributes etc.). 
>
>The bottom line is that they recommend using 
>mediocre checkers and not to use validators.
>
>Regards,
>
>Nir Dagan, Ph.D.
>http://www.nirdagan.com
>mailto:nir@nirdagan.com
>
>"There is nothing quite so practical as a good theory." 
>-- A. Einstein
>
>
>
-------
Leonard R. Kasday
Institute on Disabilities/UAP at Temple University, Philadelphia PA
email:     kasday@acm.org
telephone: (215} 204 2247

Received on Monday, 16 November 1998 14:36:25 UTC