Re: Best Practices in HTML

Tex, all,

Tex Texin wrote:

> a) The W3C Validator does not attempt to report all possible errors in 
> web
> pages, just validation or disagreement between the page and the DTD. 
> So it is
> possible for pages to be non-standard or have errors and still 
> validate.

Validation is a very specific thing indeed. I'll note that some efforts 
to have the Markup Validator go beyond pure SGML validation in its 
checking has received a very harsh and negative response. Some purists 
prefer validation to remain validation, period.

That does not preclude us from integrating several tools, including 
validation, into one checker, as you suggest:

> The solution could be as simple as define a common program interface 
> that
> allows people to integrate checking tools and have one command that 
> verifies a page using an extensible list of tools, or perhaps verifies 
> an entire web site.

...and this is pretty much where the qa-dev team is going, albeit 
slowly...

As Karl said the effort is mostly done on a voluntary basis, and each 
step (such as choosing or adapting an existing parser) takes a lot of 
time. That said,

I think a high-level discussion on the "ideal integrated Web page 
checker" would be a good thing, even now. www-validator@w3.org would be 
the right forum for that. Tex, would you start such a discussion?

Also, anyone interested in participating in the development effort (and 
that does not necessarily mean big time consuming tasks for coding 
gods, quite the contrary) should feel free to contact me directly.

> I would like to see 2 types of discussion. Perhaps it should be 
> separate lists.
> 1) list for more thorough and integrated checking tool, as discussed.

We have www-validator for that, reasonably adapted.

> 2) a place for people to discuss obstacles to upgrading to more recent
> standards or to being fully compliant, and potential workarounds or 
> solutions.

This list seems appropriate for such a topic, I think.

Thanks,
-- 
olivier