Re: Hand-coding HTML (was: New html-element: table3)

on 4/28/07 12:31 AM, Mike Schinkel at w3c-lists@mikeschinkel.com wrote:

> 
> Preston L. Bannister wrote:
>> 
>> As a practical matter, I would point folks of that sort at OpenOffice
>> (which has a pretty decent save-to-HTML or PDF), Google Docs, or the
>> like.  Hand coding HTML (especially tables) is incredibly tedious, and
>> not an efficient use of their time.  (Incidentally, my long-ago
>> college degree is in Physics, not software.) If hand-coding HTML makes
>> little sense for non-software folk now, by the time any change to HTML
>> is widely adopted (likely several years from now), the need will be
>> even less.
> I *strongly* disagree with your assertion, and have been debating it
> ad-naseum in the <indent> vs. <blockquote> thread.  Users should be able
> to hand-code HTML, period.

Users _must_ be able to hand-code, period.

> It looks like this is another need for consensus among the group.  I
> strongly believe that HTML should be able to be hand-coded and then have
> tools built.  If it can be hand-coded then tools can certainly be
> created for HTML.  If tools are instead *required* then the hand-coders
> fall by the wayside and we are stuck with lots of tools with incomplete
> functionality and inconsistent user interfaces as the only way to
> produce HTML, and that would be a giant step backward IMO.
> 
> How about we can a consensus on this, event it goes against my view, for
> the principles?

There may be situations were hand-coding is either not allowed or desirable
(blog comments, need to store input in a stripped-down xml file, etc), but
in the main, HTML production should be possible with the world's most basic
text editor. I don't want someone else deciding how, among X number of
possibilities, I'm to structure my code.

Making coding dependant on "tools" rather than "standards" would increase
the inertia of the Web so much that we'd never progress.

-- Dylan Smith

Received on Saturday, 28 April 2007 21:26:37 UTC