RE: A query please

> From:	Tantek Celik [SMTP:tantek@cs.stanford.edu]
> 
> Presumably you refer specifically to v6 right?
> 
	[DJW:]  I'm pretty sure he meant V4, given the nature of
	the particular bits of missing error recovery and the 
	reference to the, proprietory, layers feature.

	I'm pretty sure that the table closing problem is actually
	the result of an extreme lack of strictness in the parser. My
	guess is that it is the result of tag soup parsing, where the
	</table> tag triggers the output of the table.  A browser that
	parses the document would know that there was an open element,
	and might be reasonably expected to forcibly close it.  (On
	the other hand, one that did this rigorously would terminate
	font earlier than expected on many real pages and be accused of
	being broken.)

	Tag soup means that the browser acts on each tag, rather
	than on the elements.

> If you want to develop strict content, validate your content using the W3C
> validator[1] from day 1.  Every time you make major changes, validate
> again.
> 
	[DJW:]  That's the only safe way that you can check
	things like missing closing tags, or overlapped elements.
	However I'd note that you can also download the parser and
	DTDs and use them to validate pages locally.

> Modern browsers (IE5+,Opera,NN6) from more than two manufacturers produce
> the same or pretty much the same output from CSS-1 styling.
> 
	[DJW:]  That's not really true of NS4, which makes it difficult
	to write CSS that degrades well for NS4, even though it will
	degrade well for non-CSS browsers.

	Moreover, the fact that all browsers start with very similar
	style sheets is not a requirement of CSS, but rather the result
	of commercial pressure to produce the same appearance as the
	page produces on IE.  In the terms of CSS, you would need a fully
	specified style sheet to achieve that level of compatibility.

	The HTML concept requires that the HTML should read well for any
	sensible style sheet, although that is not the way HTML is normally
	designed.  The point of style sheets was to separate the 
	information on presentation from that which was necessary 
	to convey the information content of the document.

	A browser should pass the conformance tests even if it displays
	paragraphs with an indented first line and no gap between
paragraphs,
	unless text-indent and the relevant margins, etc. are explicitly
	specified.  No new browser is likely to do this, as people would,
	wrongly, accuse it of being broken.

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Received on Friday, 20 October 2000 14:14:00 UTC