Re: uri=referer

Dnia 2008-05-14, śro o godzinie 17:57 +0300, Jukka K. Korpela pisze:
> olivier Thereaux wrote:
> 
> > On 14-May-08, at 1:56 PM, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

> > Your opinion on the icons are here, stated, and archived. Many times.
> > Everyone respects your opinion.
> 
> I don't think so. Respect would be shown by adequately addressing the 
> _arguments_ I have presented (collected at 
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/validation.html#icon ). Prove them 
> wrong, or agree with them and draw the conclusions, but please don't 
> tell me you respect my opinion when you ignore it without saying why.

I do not represent W3C but I think I can help here.

> The icons add nothing to validity.  

Agreed.  So what?  
The only way of "adding to validity" is to make a invalid page valid 
because, as you correctly note yourself, 
validity is a discrete property.  
This is the job of HTML Tidy or whatever tool you have, 
although it is best done by hand, except for image sizes.

> The icons are cryptic.  

So are various Blue Ribbons and whatever.  
Only the most common pictogrammes are not.
If I do not know what they mean, I just ignore them 
(except that they are nice to look at sometimes).  

> The icons are bad propaganda.

Mostly agreed, assuming you mean "inefficient" instead of "bad"; 
please suggest a better way.

> Other “correctness” icons: say no to them, too

This has been addressed by Olivier.

> The icons lie to prospective clients.

So do you, in this very heading: 
icons do not lie, although they may be misunderstood.
But that gives you a good heading.

> Educated people know that validity claims are often false

And report that to the webmaster or author.  
If I cannot trust their Web page, I do not trust them in anything.

> Making the author’s life easier

Well, judging by the section heading only, this is an advantage.  
Feel free to change it 
to some text that reflects your opinion more closely.

Moreover, it might be easier to use browser add-ons 
if you can attach them to the browser you are using.
It is not always possible or practical.

> The W3C is just wrong here

This heading is not very informative.  
It is hard to prove you are not a camel. (a Polish proverb)

> There is no excuse now

Hasta la vista, baby.

> The “check mark” is a failure mark to some people

And the word "Valid" is English. 
Indeed, this is a good argument. 

Workaround: use p[lang="en"]

Solution: provide localized versions.  
Should not be too difficult either, 
but I do not like this idea 
until the validator interface is localized 
because it would promise too much.

> The icon link may fail miserably

The icon should not be used on restricted pages, 
including local pages accessible to people 
who do not understand the problem.

> Some final notes: why do I nitpick about “validation”

The validation on the icon is explicitly qualified; 
it is an insult to the reader 
to suspect her of assuming 
that valid HTML must contain valid information, for example.
 

Glad to hear from you.

Chris