- From: Richard A. O'Keefe <ok@atlas.otago.ac.nz>
- Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 12:16:49 +1300 (NZDT)
- To: dsr@w3.org, ok@atlas.otago.ac.nz
- Cc: bfowler@ewitness.co.uk, html-tidy@w3.org
As a general principle, if Tidy is being used in a write back mode that alters the original file, then greater caution is required to avoid loosing the author's work through unsafe guesses. As a general principle, no sane programmer _ever_ destroys an original file until the replacement has been thoroughly checked. It would never in a lifetime have occurred to me that this might be an intended mode of operation. Obviously, such an inherently highly dangerous mode of operation should be as conservative as possible. Indeed, considering the number of things a script might conceivably depend on, the only non-unsafe transformation would appear to be the identity. This is, however, no argument against the use of heuristics in a safe operation mode.
Received on Monday, 11 February 2002 18:17:02 UTC