RE: Issue 31c: Meta generator

Daniel Glazman wrote:
> 
> Le 18/05/12 21:33, Leif Halvard Silli a écrit :
> >
> > As a more helpful thing to talk about: What are your insights, as a
> > WYSIWYG HTML generator vendor,  with regard to the meta generator
> > exception?
> >
> > Because BlueGriffon inserts a meta generator, and it only gives the
> > author two options: Empty or non-empty @alt. But if BlueGriffon works
> > with some HTML where the @alt already is lacking, then it does nothing
> > about it AFAICT. Which in turn means that the page will still get a
> > ‘valid’ stamp from the validator.
> 
> To focus back on the meta generator exception, I just do not understand
> it. The meta generator was never meant to give useful information.

To your knowledge, is it used that way (to give useful information), in any form, today?  Or is it, in its current incarnation, still used for "marketing purposes" only?


> It
> has always been almost only a way for editing tool authors to insert an
> advertisement for their tool in the documents created by users.

So when HTML5 becomes a Recommendation, this new rule will be something that no authoring tool has had to deal with previously? I would suspect that this would also be the case for conformance checkers as well, correct?

If the meta-generator string and subsequent rule proved to introduce an accessibility issue, would you as a tool vendor remove this marketing string from your tool/templates? 

Do you have any opinion or knowledge of what other tool vendors might do under this same circumstance?


> In that sense, basing any kind of rule on the presence of such a meta
> tag seems to me a pretty serious conceptual error.

I believe this is the heart of the problem, and reason for the request to re-open the issue. The Chairs appear to be seeking "concrete evidence" of, or "identification of explicit harm" based upon future events. As we can only hypothesize on future events, your opinion as a tool vendor will at least hopefully guide the discussion towards what we might expect from tool vendors in the future.

Cheers!

JF

Received on Friday, 18 May 2012 22:20:45 UTC