W3C home > Mailing lists > Public > www-validator@w3.org > February 2002

Re: html editors

From: Philip TAYLOR <P.Taylor@rhul.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2002 14:12:43 +0000
Message-ID: <3C628B5B.65237FA0@Rhul.Ac.Uk>
To: ewitness - Ben Fowler <bfowler@ewitness.co.uk>
CC: "'www-validator@w3.org'" <www-validator@w3.org>

> The only validation error that you are likely to see in
> Dreamweaver is missing ALT attributes. So it is not really
> that disturbing.  

If only that were true; by default, DW doesn't even emit a DOCTYPE
directive, throws away trailing slashes in relative URLs, and is
capable of generating the most appalling code (e.g., <LI>s that are
not within an <OL> or <UL> context.  HoTMetaL PRO is, I think, still
the only editor that generates reasonable code even in the hands of
the completely unskilled (although /it/ emits a proprietary DTD in
the default DOCTYPE, and places <IMG>s after the closing </HTML> if
the user tries to insert one in a non-permitted contex)t.  It also
suppresses all syntax checking during pasting, so copy-and-paste
is a pretty sure way of getting it to generate invalid HTML.  
I just wish there were an editor which offered the functionality
of Dreamweaver and/or HoTMetaL, which regarded the choice of DOCTYPE
as fundamental, and which /never/ generated invalid code.  One day,
maybe...

Philip Taylor, RHBNC
Received on Thursday, 7 February 2002 09:13:07 UTC

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