[Bug 1399] Description misrepresents what the validator does

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=1399





------- Additional Comments From ewexler@stickdog.com  2005-05-17 17:01 -------
The wording suggested in comment #4 is not acceptable to me, but has some strong
points.

Using the word "this" instead of the phrase "W3C Markup Validation Service" is
positive, since the word "this" is shorter and, given the context of the
tagline, just as clear.

Using the qualification "helps check" is decent in that it doesn't claim to do
everything. But in the comment #4 wording, which explicitly says "validity", the
qualification is almost unnecessary (excepting the few hiccups over differences
between SGML and XML). Worse, the qualification is far too easy to miss. We want
people to notice the words of caution as much as they notice the  rest.

Specifying the formats is clutter. The phrase "Web documents" is good enough by
itself. HTML documents are obviously included and so should not be specified. If
anybody thinks that PDF documents or Microsoft Word documents or whatever odd
others are Web documents in the sense intended, that person will soon enough
discover otherwise.

The comment #4 wording, despite giving concrete examples of formats ("HTML,
XHTML"), ends with "and other formats", undoing the preceding narrowing of scope.

I want to omit the words "valid" and "validity". In the English language, both
terms have common meanings that are not the same as the meaning of the jargon.
Using either word will cause misunderstanding.

My latest suggestion follows.

"This is a free service that helps check standards conformance in Web documents.
This service does not check for full conformance."

Received on Tuesday, 17 May 2005 20:04:32 UTC