Re: t0805-c5520-brdr-b-01-e.htm

On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Edward Reid wrote:
> 
> My experience with this page was:
> 
> 1) Opening it in iCab 3.0.280 under Mac OS 9.1 resulted in different
> characters being displayed from those intended.

That's a bug in iCab. Score one for the test, whose job is to find bugs.


> 2) Opening the source in Page Spinner 3.1.2 under Max OS 9.1 resulted in 
> three garbage characters where the arrows should be.

Score two for the test.


> 3) Opening the source in TextPad under Windows XP SP2 resulted in 
> TextPad claiming these characters are non-ASCII and replacing them with 
> question marks.

Score three...


> 4) Opening the source in HTML-Kit under Windows XP SP2 resulted in 
> display of three garbage characters where the arrows should be.

Four.

Four bugs found with one test. Not bad! Normally a well-written test only 
finds one or two bugs at a time.


> So whether or not there is a technical specification for these 
> characters, in practice they are highly ambiguous using software in 
> widespread use today.

This would be a valid concern for a Web page. This is not a Web page, it's 
a test case. Test cases are designed specifically to catch bugs.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Tuesday, 7 June 2005 13:13:14 UTC