Re: 9. WYSIWYG editor (enforcing the signature)

At 16:32 +0900 UTC, on 2007-08-06, Karl Dubost wrote:

> Le 4 août 2007 à 05:56, Ian Hickson a écrit :

[... dropping
<http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/section-presentational.html#wysiwyg0>]

>> We still need a better solution for handling the two tiers of
>> document quality,

[...]

> 	 <meta name="conform" content="html5-bp">
>
> html5-bp = HTML 5 Best Practices. It would acknowledge a set of rules
> defined by the Web community and considered as "good HTML".

What is the problem that is being solved here?

Obviously I recognise a use for easy identification of quality. It's why The
Web Repair Initiative aims to certify authoring tools:
<http://webrepair.org/strategy/certification>. But I don't see how a mere
string claiming quality, or lack thereof, could ever be useful -- it would be
easy to be spoofed. The only way for it to have meaning would be if either it
somehow can only be added to a document after the quality of the document has
been established, which I don't see how to achieve, or if it would be
verifiable.

The latter might be possible, if it were combined with a mechanism to easily
verify the claim. For certified authoring tools, and for individually
certified sites, that might be possible through something like:

<link rel="quality" href="http://webrepair.org/certificates/id" title="WRI
certified"> pointing to a document that confirms that the web page in
question, and/or the authoring tool that generated its code, are certified.

Or to apply it to your idea of a HTML WG "best practices" document:<link
rel="quality" href="http://w3.org/certificates/bp/id" title="W3C Best
Practices certified">. (In which case W3C would have to bother to do
certification.)

But without any such confirmability 'built-in' to the claiming mechanism, it
seems it would be an empty claim. Any crap site could insert <meta
name="conform" content="html5-bp">.

Obviously, any site could as easily insert <link rel="quality"
href="http://crap.example/file" title="ACME certified">. But the machanism
allows inspection of the claim. If it links to a certifier that is unknown to
you, and/or you can see that their certificate is meaningless/useless, you
know how to interpret the claim.

[Aside: possibly such quality certificates could actually be in a
machine-redable format, similar to SSL certificates. Or even easier, have the
<link> element point to a 'secure resource' using https. Once the certifier
has been granted trust, a claim can automatically be verified through
verification of the SSL certificate.]


-- 
Sander Tekelenburg
The Web Repair Initiative: <http://webrepair.org/>

Received on Monday, 6 August 2007 08:43:50 UTC