Re: Pedagogic validation

Lars Gunther writes:

> 2009-09-10 15:49, Smylers skrev:
> 
> > I think it's entirely reasonable for somebody to declare a labelled
> > group of restrictions on HTML 5 style as being useful for teaching
> > purposes.  It's also reasonable for somebody else to declare a
> > _different_ set of restrictions also being useful for teaching
> > purposes (and to label them differently).
> 
> For exactly this reason we who do teach this stuff need to discuss  
> options and see where the might be a reasonable amount of agreement

Why?  Why is any agreement needed on this at all?  You can publish the
'Gunther Guidelines' and say that you find following them makes HTML5
easier to learn.  Nobody can possibly disagree with that.  Maybe some
software (validators or otherwise) implemeent them.  Maybe they catch on
and many other people wish to use your guidelines as well.

At no point in the above does the W3C (certainly not the HTML WG anyway)
need to reach agreement on anything, nor endorse any particular HTML5
subset as being "pedagogic".

> and what is the best way of solving our differences.

Why do they need solving?  Each of us are happy to teach in our own
ways.  We can co-exist while having different approaches.

> I find that it is very much easier for my students to comprehend
> <Snip>

I believe you -- I believe that the restrictions you list are useful to
your teaching.  They are reasonable.  I was just pointing out how
opposing guidelines can _also_ be reasonable; as such no one set should
be able to claim to be "the pedagogic rules".

> > Indeed anybody with a Unix shell background is already very familiar
> > with the idea that quotes are needed when spaces or certain
> > punctuation characters are involved.
> 
> That is NOT a description of the average student!

No, but groups of such students do exist; there's no need to exclude
them.


> >    <input type=text value=Login name name=login> 
> >
> > the above already fails validation because of the duplicate name
> > attribute.  (With different text it would fail with an unknown
> > attribute.)
> 
> Not in the W3C version of the validator, but I suppose that it's not
> on the most recent code.

I tried it on http://html5.validator.nu/ -- choose 'Text Field' then
paste the above <input> element between the <p>...</p> tags in its
skeleton document.

> It might even make it possible to include a lower case criteria for
> tags and attributes

Yeah, why not?  Anybody can choose any 'house style' guidelines they
want.

Smylers

Received on Friday, 11 September 2009 15:39:30 UTC