Re: Audience Based Validator User Interface (ISSUE-206)

Hi Henri,

The crux of the matter is that some
> markup generator developers expect some people who evaluate the
> quality of their generator to throw the output of the generator at a
> validator and judge the generator negatively if the validator
> complains. Therefore, these markup generator developers make the
> output of their generators such that the validator won't complain
> *when invoked the way the markup generator developers expect the
> people who evaluate quality the generators to invoke the validator*
> (i.e. with defalut settings).
>
> This scenario has been stated again and again ever since 2007. It's
> pretty frustrating that the scenario is still being misunderstood.
>

Its also pretty frustrating that this scenario has been stated again and
again, without actually the production of any data to confirm that markup
generators actually add alt="" in order to stop the validation tools
complaining.

providing such data would knock any doubts on the head.

regards
SteveF


On 5 August 2012 09:40, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 10:55 PM, Laura Carlson
> <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com> wrote:
>> The crux of the matter has always been that two validator user groups
>> 1.) authors  2.) engineers of large web applications have different
>> goals.
>
> That's not the crux of the matter. The crux of the matter is that some
> markup generator developers expect some people who evaluate the
> quality of their generator to throw the output of the generator at a
> validator and judge the generator negatively if the validator
> complains. Therefore, these markup generator developers make the
> output of their generators such that the validator won't complain
> *when invoked the way the markup generator developers expect the
> people who evaluate quality the generators to invoke the validator*
> (i.e. with defalut settings).
>
> This scenario has been stated again and again ever since 2007. It's
> pretty frustrating that the scenario is still being misunderstood.
>
>> How about the possibility of the vaildator having two
>> separate yet side-by-side options based on the audience?  A simple
>> user interface mockup is at:
>> http://www.d.umn.edu/~lcarlson/research/206/byaudience.html
>>
>> The idea would be to have an audience section at the beginning of the
>> page. If the "Generator Developers" radio button is selected the new
>> attribute would kick in and allow the page to pass validation. And if
>> the "Authors" radio button is selected it wouldn't. Check out the
>> mockup and and let me know what you think.
>
> This won't work, because people who evaluate the quality of markup
> generators can be trusted to do so only in the "Generator Developers"
> mode. It doesn't matter if running a validator with the default
> setting on the output of a generator is the wrong way to evaluate the
> quality of the generator.
>
> --
> Henri Sivonen
> hsivonen@iki.fi
> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
>



-- 
with regards

Steve Faulkner
Technical Director - TPG

www.paciellogroup.com | www.HTML5accessibility.com |
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