- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 21:55:08 +0000 (UTC)
- To: Philip & Le Khanh <Philip-and-LeKhanh@Royal-Tunbridge-Wells.Org>
- Cc: "Philip Taylor (Webmaster)" <P.Taylor@Rhul.Ac.Uk>, www-archive@w3.org
Given how "meta" this discussion has become I've gone back to only cc'ing www-archive. On Thu, 21 Jun 2007, Philip & Le Khanh wrote: > > Then are you claiming to be a better judge of an HTML document's > validity than the current W3C Validator? Nope. > I argue that "validity" is a simple pass-or-fail criterion, and that the > test of validity is the comparison of the document with the > specification against which it claims to have been written. You are, I > think, arguing that "validity" varies over time, and that something that > was once "invalid" may become "valid" if it is consistent with a later > specification, or that something that was once "valid" may become > "invalid" for an analogous reason. Validity to a particlar language version doesn't change. An HTML4- conforming document will always be HTML4-conforming. However, it might not be HTML5-conforming (and an HTML4-non-conforming document might in fact be HTML5-conforming). All I am saying is that including a version in the document such that the validators check that version rather than the latest version is bad, because it shields authors from progress. Authors should be able to tell the conformance checker to check their document against a particular version if they have some sort of historical interest in that, but the document shouldn't claim to be a particular version, because then authors would (intentionally or not) hide behind that instead of improving the quality of their documents. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Thursday, 21 June 2007 21:57:17 UTC