Re: [VE][html5] Character Set ISO-8859-1 vs windows-1252

Michael[tm] Smith wrote:

> If you mean the CR draft, the validator isn't intended to be limited 
> to tracking the CR draft So the CR draft isn't relevant. In my reply
> to your question about the checking of character-set encoding values,
> I pointed you to the document that actually is relevant.

Yet the document to which you referred me is not the document
to which the W3C itself refers in its definition of HTML 5.  So
who decides what is, and what is not, HTML 5 : the W3C, or some
quasi-autonomous group of individuals working under the W3C's
aegis ?

> A Candidate Recommendation is a document that W3C believes has been 
> widely reviewed and satisfies the Working Group's technical 
> requirements. W3C publishes a Candidate Recommendation to gather 
> implementation experience.

What is the purpose of CR status if it is not respected
by those responsible for maintaing the W3C validator ?  The
W3C cannot "gain implemention experience" if those seeking
to implement the CR are misled by diagnostics from the validator
that references a different, and fundamentally less stable,
version of the draft specification.

> The validator tracks the latest available version of HTML, along with
> relevant extension specifications.

Then that rather defeats the whole purpose of validation, does it not ?
Given that the HTML 5 cadre, in their infinite wisdom, saw fit to
eliminate any indication of the /version/ of HTML to which an HTML 5
document claims to conform, leaving only the vestigial and inherently
meaningless <!DOCTYPE HTML>, then an HTML 5 document that is valid today
may, if your definition of the role of the W3C validator is to be
accepted, be invalid tomorrow, and valid again the day after as the
HTML 5.1 Nightly Editor's Draft waxes and wanes with the tide, the
phase of the moon and the prevailing wind direction.  You may just as
well replace the present validator with a one-line program that simply
emits the word "Maybe" -- it would be just about as much use.

Philip Taylor

Received on Sunday, 24 March 2013 17:46:12 UTC