Re: Idea for the validators

* cirrus wrote:
>I would have thought it would suffice to say something like:
>
>The page you just came from conforms to current technical standards for
>webpages. An automated test was run before this text was displayed to
>confirm this.

It does not. The HTML Validator tests only for a small aspect of HTML
conformance. It will not detect various formal errors (<img width=foo
...> in HTML or <p><a ...><span><a ...>...</a></span></a></p> in XHTML)
or improper use of language elements (<font> for headings). It
is not even meant to test for compliance with WAI, DOM, CSS, HTTP, etc.

If you like to have some seal of approval and a document which explains
its meaning it would be a seal of self-approval and the document would
explicitly state that the author of the referring document *claims* to
be conforming to the standards, not that W3C makes any confirmation of
this claim.

I do not think that the MarkUp Validator should provide such material as
such a general claim is outside the scope of the validator. I do neither
think that any W3C activity should produce and publish such material.
It's just asking for trouble. The WaSP is a better organization for this
kind of service and they already provide much of the requested material.
If their material is insufficient, talk to them or other interested
parties over at <public-evangelist@w3.org>.

FWIW, my new digital camera claims conformance to EN60950, EN55022
(1998, class B), EN55024 (1998), EN61000-3-2 (1995 + A1: 1998 + A2:
1998) in conformance with EMC guidelines (89/336/EEC, 92/31/EEC, and
93/68/EEC) and low voltage guideline 73/23/EEC on page 3 of the users
manual. I do not understand what this is about nor do I feel interested
enough to find it out. I do not even feel better now that I know my
camera adhers to some standards. In fact, I didn't even notice any of
these claims when looking at the manual the first time.

Received on Wednesday, 30 July 2003 21:39:16 UTC