Required views

In the November 12 version guideline 5.1 requires optional views of the
document. The Priority 1 techniques are to support an authoring/editing
view and a browsing view which is equivalent to a print preview in a word
processor.

I don't think this makes much sense - word processors produce a particular
kind of output depending on the printing setup. HTML does not - it depends
on the client User Agent, which is totally unpredictable (that's why we're
doing this). So a preview function is going to reinforce an artificial
view that the page 'IS' the way that it is rendered by MSIE, or Lynx, or
whatever rendering engine is used for the preview mode. Providing multiple
rendering agents, which is equivalent to testing a page in numerous user
agents is not scaleable, and not really practical anyway.

Nonetheless many developers do make use of some rendering engine in an
attempt to convince people that WYSIWYG editing of HTML is possible,
because that is the idea many naive web authors have.

I therefore suggest that we replace the guideline with one something like
the following:

Guideline: Where a rendering engine is used, ensure that it allows the
user to customise presentation.

Rationale: Making web authors more aware of the fact that the presentation
of Web material is finally under the control of the user will increase
their ability to understand the many accessibility issues that arise from
the mistaken view that 'the Internet is <some browser>' and give them a
more realisitic understanding of the different ways their material may be
presented.

Techniques: Use a rendering engine that provides the accessibility
features required by the User Agent Guidelines[1] [Priority 2 - it is
possible to produce an authoring tool which has no rendering engine and
which is still accessible]

Charles McCathieNevile

Received on Monday, 7 December 1998 11:07:32 UTC