RE: frames and no frames content

>> is it acceptable that the noframes content is merely
>> an explanation that frames is required?

Clearly from 1.1 and the technique documents, no.

However, those asserting that 11.4 comes into play and therefore you need a frame-free parallel site are doing so without any authoritative reference.  

To these well intentioned folks, I ask:
If a colleague asks you how to do X in MS Word, do you give them a lecture on Open Source or try to convince them to use HTML instead?

I believe it is a disservice to present standards as requiring more than they do.  I would also like to remind folks of our tradition (since the first days of the Web) that Single-A compliance can be achieved without altering the default graphical visual presentation.

If a site owner asserts that frames or graphical text or something else are essential, we have no business arguing with them about that.

>> Also as a side query, does anyone have any stats on 
>> browsers used that do not understand frames.

> That's the wrong question.
> I think you mean which browsers don't display frames as IE does.

No, it's a good question.  The WAI Techniques documents are all written from the perspective of a mythical browser that *discards* FRAME information and only exposes NOFRAME content.  I find the approach that a text-only browser like Lynx uses to be superior because it gives one *both*.  I wish the Mozilla lineage browsers did the same thing.