Re: HTML5 script start tag should select appropriate content model according to src

Henri Sivonen wrote:

 >>   My answer to the above is yes. If the tools, which people do appear to
 >>   root for, become better. I would without hesitation say that an author
 >>   who takes the trouble of manually writing markup both should and ought
 >>   have learnt to use the features of the language.
 >
 > That seems like a moral argument.

 From my perspective, a totally rational argument.  How
many Fortran programmers believe they can ignore the
syntax, semantics & morphology of the language yet
still get useful results ?  C programmers ?  Java
programmers ?  Any-language-you-care-to-mention
programmers ?  Answer : almost none.  Yet you seem
hell-bent on believing that HTML authors deserve
to be treated differently (specially, in fact).
WHY ?  Just because they are "authors" and not
"programmers" ?  That argument just doesn't hold
water.  If a real author chooses to typeset his
book, then he'd better learn a great deal both
about typography and about the package he intends
to use.  If he doesn't, then he can confidently
expect to produce rubbish.  It may be well-written
rubbish, but it will be rubbish from a typographic
perspective.  So why should a web author be treated
any differently ?  If he /does/ insist on doing
the markup himself, rather than employ a professional
to do it, then he can either (to use Tina's words)
"learn to use the features of the language" or he
can expect to produce rubbish.  Document markup is
a skilled and specialist task : it deserves (and
needs) a language that that allows the person performing
that task to express himself accurately and clearly.
Once the markup is complete, another skilled and
specialist task emerges : converting that markup
into a beautiful and accessible web page.  They are
not the same skills, and there is very clear received
wisdom that they need totally different languages.
Keep HTML clean and simple for document markup, and
leave presentation to CSS and its friends.

Philip Taylor

Received on Sunday, 29 April 2007 22:29:01 UTC