Re: suggest validator prefer URI to FPI

On Thu, 2004-08-05 at 11:13, Terje Bless wrote:
[...]
> >Taking a practical example: - if the FPI and the System ID differs, it's
> >probably a good idea to tell the user - 
> 
> Yes, without question; which is why it's been on our feature «wishlist» ever
> since Karl brought it up a couple of years ago (IIRC). Unfortunately this is
> not easily implemented, so it's stayed — and will likely stay for the
> forseeable future — on the «wishlist»[0].
> 
> Patches gratefully accepted!

Noted... I'm thinking about how to do it.

> But this is _not_ what I read Dan's suggestion to be. Even after several
> readings of what he wrote, my understanding of it is that he wants the SysID
> to be preferred over a PubID; regardless that both are present and whether
> they differ, and with no particular note of a desire for a user warning when
> they differ.

No, that's not what I want. I was perhaps too brief when I wrote

"I'd like the markup validation service to provide clear feedback
about that problem."

but all of the stuff Dom suggests sounds good to me.

> As best I can tell this is just another effort to impose arbitrary preferences
> expressed in WebArch on the Markup Validator; since, at least as far as I was
> able to interpret Dan's message, his suggestion was not attempting to solve
> any actual technical problem.

Oh please! I made it pretty clear that I am an actual user of
the validation service, and I was using it in my real-world, day-to-day
life, maintaing pages for groups that I serve, and in the course
of doing so, the output of the validator surprised me.

> You'll note that the document cited as an example has been revised no less
> than three times since first referenced here, and the SysID has still not been
> corrected.

Only because I haven't found time to capture the situation in a separate
test file. Do you guys maintain regression tests somewhere?

>  It hardly seems as if this was a particularly pressing problem
> confounded by the current Markup Validator behaviour.

Pressing or not, it's useful to report problems as I find them, no?

[...]
> First of all, let me note again that I disagree vehemently that a URI is a
> superior identifier in general, and yet more so in the specific case of an
> entity reference.
[...]

More on that after I've had some time to think it over, I hope.


-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Thursday, 5 August 2004 13:40:14 UTC