Re: Support Existing Content

On 4 May 2007, at 08:44, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

>>>
>> Do you honestly think that by encouraging people to write more  
>> correct code is not a help to anyone?
>
> To answer for myself: yes, I think encouraging people to write  
> conforming content is somewhat helpful (though less so than  
> encouraging them to actually test in multiple browsers). But I do  
> not think /forcing/ people to write conforming content is a help to  
> anyone, especially if author mistakes then become problems for the  
> end user. And when we are talking about draconian error handling to  
> the point of refusing to render, we're talking about forcing, not  
> encouraging.
>
> So I'd say that I don't think "pro-actively fix[ing]" the web is a  
> help to anyone, if that is taken to mean an attempt to force  
> conformance.
>
> What's your answer?
>
I think that the situation we have just now is untenable. I don't  
think any form of (your definition) encouragement is going to work,  
after all, people have been pretty much free to go your way for years  
and haven't, so let's try (my definition) encouraging them a  
different way, which prevents them from getting things wrong.

[aside: maybe it's because I grew up with "Segmentation Fault" fatal  
errors that I don't see that kind of error handling as "wrong"]

I think "draconian" error handling leads to a much more educated author.
Doesn't  "Parse error : line 5" - tell you all you need to know?

I certainly wouldn't be to adverse to
	 "This page was written as HTML5, but it is invalid. Error is 'non- 
conformity - line 5'. Do you want to try this as html4?"

Where the browser will attempt to render the page minus the html5  
doctype declaration.

Gareth

Received on Friday, 4 May 2007 08:52:50 UTC