Re: accessify.com's review of RNIB relaunch

Kynn Bartlett wrote:
>How are those arguments for XHTML?  What are the advantages of XHTML
>over HTML in these cases?

Well, as long as it's my hypothetical situation, those are devices 
accept any well-formed XML, not HTML.

>Except I'm not hung up on that at all, so you need a new explanation.

I said "people", not "you".

>Yes, yes, your flying magical car.  Let's talk reality:  Your nifty
>car will continue to understand HTML for years and years.  Arguing that
>something which doesn't exist yet is a reason seems to be a poor reason
>for doing something.

Just because I've got a serious point doesn't mean I can't have a little 
fun with the explanation. My reason stands that it's for anything, a 
"magical flying car" (your words, not mine) or otherwise.

>Sure, you can pull up other advantages -- "I can use my XML development
>tools on it" -- and that's all well and nice.  But by itself, XHTML is
>not automatically more accessible than HTML, and anyone who claims
>otherwise is simply incorrect.

You're missing my point. You're trying to merge my argument with someone 
else's. I never said XHTML was more beneficial to someone with 
disabilities, I said XHTML data could be considered more accessible 
because the information it contains can be accessed by anything that 
reads XML, not just devices (like browsers) that are designed 
specifically to render HTML.

The move of HTML to XML form is just to enforce some rules on it that 
every single device out there that benefits from XML data doesn't have 
to strain development costs in order to also support another set of 
rules just for HTML benefit.

>>> XHTML also has the drawback that, if there is a single error, it will
>>> not display in any XHTML browser or XML parser.
>>
>> Good. Why is that a drawback?
> 
>Because it doesn't do anything to the Web developer, just to the Web
>user. It puts the problem on the wrong person.

What?! The only problems that would arise from this would be on lazy 
development. The reason it's not a drawback is specifically that it 
forces the developer not to be sloppy with a mistake that might cause a 
problem for the user.

>> In hindsight, a lot of people consider it a drawback that HTML was 
>> /ever/ "forgiving". It allowed all those developers to become lazy.
>
>No, this is historical revisionism.
>
>Besides, we are talking about non-lazy, valid HTML 4.01.  We're not
>talking about spaghetti code in either XHTML or HTML.

You're whole argument for this was that HTML renderers glossed over 
mistakes while XHTML would keep documents from displaying. If it was 
valid HTML 4.01, what "mistakes" were you referring to?

HTML versus XHTML is getting to be another Holy War that I'll try to 
back out of for now. I can agree to disagree.

Cheers,
James Craig

-- 
http://www.cookiecrook.com/

Received on Wednesday, 25 June 2003 18:54:26 UTC