Re: Error Message Feedback

On Sat, 21 Jan 2006, Martin Eklund wrote:

> Line 1089 column 18: there is no attribute "WRAP".
>
> <textarea wrap="off" ...
>
> I think the message should mention the css props,
> it took me hours to find:
> "white-space: nowrap ; overflow:auto ;"

The purpose of a validator is to report reportable markup errors. 
Generally, anyone who uses a validator is expected to take it from there, 
using whatever authoring resources he knows. I'm afraid a validator cannot 
contain very much information about CSS equivalents, especially since most 
nonstandard constructs used in HTML have no clear-cut CSS equivalents.

I must admit, though, that it would be nice if your point could be 
included into the examples that the validator gives about possibilities of 
replacing commonly used "HTML extensions". After all, I did not realize 
that you could use CSS that way - and I have made some study of textarea 
wrapping over the years. The wrap="off" attribute used to be among my 
favorite points in saying that sometimes nonstandard markup is 
justifiable - a nonstandard way of making browser behave the way the 
standard suggests! (I still have <nobr> and <wbr> in my bag.)

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Tuesday, 24 January 2006 17:32:37 UTC