RE: error tolerance within amaya

On Wed, 8 Sep 1999, John Russell wrote:

> if it were an editor/verifier  it should raise an error message saying gris
> is not an acceptable colour .....

According to what I can make of the HTML 4.0 spec, there is no default
colour for backgrounds in HTML, and CSS2 seems to say that where no colour
is defined then the result is undefined. It does not say it will default
to black, although it does say it will depend on the agent.

Since Amaya seems to be an editor first and browser second, I think that
it should not default to black without saying why.  Maybe it should ask
the user what colour to use, with some predefined choices?  People may
wish to turn the warnings off for browsing, but to leave colours undefined
will lead to accessibility problems.  Accessibility is mentioned under use
of colour in the HTML 4 spec.

I think it should also conplain if foreground colours are defined without
background colours, or vice versa.  Maybe in the future the colours could
be checked, so authors can be warned that the shades are too close
together (displays vary, as do users colour perception) or will cause
problems for red/green colourblind people, etc, but that would be some way
off.

	Hugh
	hgs@dmu.ac.uk

Received on Wednesday, 8 September 1999 09:36:38 UTC