Re: W3C supposed to have something to do with STANDARDS

At 10:02 AM 10/06/1999 -0400, Uriel Wittenberg wrote:
>I barely know what SGML stands for, much less what it represents.

This may be the root of the problem, and it's hardly the fault of the
web validation service...

>I have no way of knowing if Liam's or any other validator is correct. If
>the W3C site tells people like me they can use any validator, you'll have
>even well-intentioned people, who WANT to adhere to the standard,
>publishing non-standard HTML. They'll stumble across Joe Blow's validator
>somewhere -- an ingenious tool that makes sure the number of <'s in the
>document is EXACTLY equal to the number of  >'s -- and they'll stick your
>logo on faulty pages ... with your approval.

Except they don't validate and anyone with half a brain could check
that.  I mean, if they know this enough to get to the W3C icon, you
think they'd figure out what you suggest above.

>I would suggest: "you may display the W3C icon on any page approved by
>the W3C validator." Sophisticated, experienced people, of course, would
>understand that they don't have to religiously validate at your site each
>time any change is made. It's an assertion about the author's
>well-founded belief that it _would_ validate.

No, they wouldn't understand that, because in the scenario you
describe above, validation of each and every page is REQUIRED, and
that may indeed be impossible, especially for dynamically generated
web pages.

>If it's worth the trouble to you (and again, this can be set up as
>something that pays for itself), you could change the above to: "you may
>display the W3C icon on any page approved either by the W3C's own
>validator, or by any of the W3C-endorsed validators listed below."

The W3C is not a validation-endorsement service; there are no
standards in place for "approving" validators.  Perhaps an interest
group should be formed to explore the issues relating to HTML
validators, and a Working Group could be spun off to draft a set of
requirements and recommendations for validators, and then those
could be submitted to the AC as a proposed recommendation, and
eventually get Tim Berners-Lee's stamp of approval and become
official Consortium Recommendation...

...but that seems to be an awful lot of work for a problem that 
just bothers one fellow, who admits he has no understanding what
SGML even is.  Perhaps it would be better to spend more energy
educating you?

--Kynn

--
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn@idyllmtn.com>                   http://www.kynn.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet      http://www.idyllmtn.com/
Catch the web accessibility meme!                   http://aware.hwg.org/

Received on Wednesday, 6 October 1999 12:49:45 UTC