Re: hand authoring web pages (was Re: Exploring new vocabularies for HTML)

Justin James wrote:
>> My experience has been that many pages are in fact hand-authored, either
>> directly in a text editor, or through CMS systems that provide raw HTML
>> editors, or through templates that are hand edited. I do not think we can
>> forgo addressing the needs of hand-authoring content creators.
> 
> The simple fact is, these CMS HTML editor widgets (like TinyMCE and FSCK)
> were developed well into the HTML 4 era, yet they use <b> and <i> all over
> the place from what I have seen. There is a huge portion of people
> performing hand editing are still using the <font> tag, despite trying to
> mark their page as strict HTML 4 (their editor stuck the doctype in, then
> they hand mangled the code with the "help" of some tutorial found online and
> written in 1995).
> 
> In a nutshell, the people who care about being compliant work hard to do it,
> and everyone else does whatever is easiest. Therefore, we need to make the
> spec itself the easiest way to do things.
> 
<snip>
My AUD 0.2c, responding to this and earlier posts.

I code raw HTML, on linux and find the inbuilt support for HTML, in the text
editor useful. However, one of the biggest shortcomings, I see, in HTML is a
lack of reuse functionality. I use the Apache Server include functionality.

That said, I have been guilty of using <B>, <i> and <font> (not to mention
align) long into the HTML4 era because, a CSS requires analysis and structuring
of the document being encoded.

I see three categories of HTML generators. One is a WP/user based one, which
provides users with just enough rope to hang themselves. The second is a
generator which spits out webpages from structured information. Then there are
the hybrid Wikipedia/Blog type ones.

Being old enough to remember 3GLs, the problem is that there are often
limitations and you invariably need to look at the underlying code. Which is 
usually a dog's breakfast.

PDF is also being generated by software - for billing/invoices/statements.

Perhaps it comes back to needing to clearly position HTML5 and drivers. I joined
the discussion group because of the multimedia/video/audio. It is not compliance
with HTML 5 that is an end in itself. It is interoperability that is the driver.

Marghanita
-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
http://www.ramin.com.au
Phone: (+61)0414 869202

Received on Wednesday, 2 April 2008 21:38:55 UTC