- From: Gregory J. Rosmaita <oedipus@hicom.net>
- Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:15:35 -0400
- To: public-html@w3.org
- Cc: Jim Allan <jimallan@tsbvi.edu>
this message is in direct response to both chris wilson's post, archived at: <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Apr/0205.html> and the response of dao gottwald, archived at: <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Apr/0222.html> which left me with the distinct impression that there is a faction of developers and page authors out there who want to deny client-side access to document source. denying access to document source is a clear violation of User Agent Accessibility (UAAG) Guideline 2 quote cite: <http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG/guidelines.html#gl-content-access> Ensure user access to all content unquote in particular, Priority 1 Checkpoint 2.2: quote cite: <http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG/guidelines.html#tech-doc-source-view> 2.2 Provide text view (P1) 1. For contentc authored in text formats, provide a view of the text source. Normative inclusions and exclusions 1. For the purposes of this checkpoint, a text format is: * any media object given an Internet media type of "text" (e.g., "text/plain", "text/html", or "text/*") as defined in RFC 2046 [RFC2046] section 4.1, or * any media object identified by Internet media type to be an XML document (as defined in [XML], section 2) or SGML application. Refer, for example, to Internet media types defined in "XML Media Types" [RFC3023] 2. The user agent is only required to satisfy this checkpoint for text formats that are part of a conformance claim; see the section on conformance profiles for more information. However, user agents should provide a text view for all implemented text formats. unquote UAAG defines quote text source unquote as: quote cite: <http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG/glossary.html#def-text-source> Document source, text source In this document, the term "document source" refers to the data that the user agent receives as the direct result of a request for a Web resource (e.g., as the result of an HTTP/1.1 [RFC2616] "GET", or as the result of viewing a resource on the local file system). The document source generally refers to the "payload" of the user agent's request, and does not generally include information exchanged as part of the transfer protocol. The document source is data that is prior to any repair by the user agent (e.g., prior to repairing invalid markup). "Text source" refers to the text portion of the document source. unquote UAAG further defines quote text unquote as: quote cite: <http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG/glossary.html#def-text> Text In this document, the term "text" used by itself refers to a sequence of characters from a markup language's document character set. Refer to the "Character Model for the World Wide Web" [CHARMOD] for more information about text and characters. unquote the Techniques for Checkpoint 2.2 <http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10-TECHS/guidelines.html#tech-doc-source- view> includes what was referred to in the User Agent (UA) working group when UAAG 1.0 was being written, as the quote final fallback unquote option -- if all else fails, enable user access to the document source, and that the text be quote useful unquote. the barest minimum requirement is to provide a TEXT view of a document's source, not a non-interactive, non-cut-and-pastable, rendering of the document source. document source is the resort of last choice, but it is essential for some of those who still crawl, rather than surf, the web, due to missing ALT-text, un-LABEL-ed form controls, and other authoring errors which the end user must correct, using the document source, just so that the document can be used and/or understood by the user. (i have had to fix document source in order to use my online banking interface, for example, obviously by providing the site's maintainers with a de- and re-constructed, annotated document source) UAAG also strongly discourages browser instances, stripped of the user's pre-configured chrome (e.g. if address bar and menues are what the user prefers, the user's chrome preferences MUST be respected, and appear in the new browser instance or tab) HTML is text, interpreted by renderers, but at root, it is text, and an interactive text view of document source is imperative for diagnosing and repairing errors, invalid markup, etc. the moral of the story: let's do as we say: UAAG is a W3C technical recommendation, just as HTML is a W3C technical recommendation; anyone seeking to render the latter in compliance with the former will enable user access to the quote text portion of the the document source. gregory. ------------------------------------------------------------------ ACCOUNTABILITY, n. The mother of caution. Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_ ------------------------------------------------------------------ Gregory J. Rosmaita: oedipus@hicom.net AND unagi69@concentric.net ------------------------------------------------------------------ Celebrate The Holy Days of Obfuscation: http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/obfuscation.html ------------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Friday, 13 April 2007 20:16:11 UTC