- From: Jukka K. Korpela <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi>
- Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 15:53:32 +0300 (EEST)
- To: www-validator@w3.org
On Sat, 13 May 2006, Michael Adams wrote: >> (On the other hand, why don't you just remove the comment? If your >> HTML markup "needs" a comment, the odds are that it is too artificial >> and should be restructured. Comments considered harmful.) >> > > Ok, Jukka, I'll bite. Why are comments considered harmful? Lots of reasons, one of which I mentioned: people use them to maintain the illusion of understandable code, instead of using logical and understandable code (markup). HTML is not programming, and markup should describe the logical structure of a document, instead of itself needing some descriptions and explanations. Moreover, comments lead to trouble (as in this question) due to the complexity of SGML comment rules; they increase the HTML document's size and therefore transfer time each and every time the document is requested; they often present metadata (e.g., authorship information) that should appear either as part of visible content or in a more structured way in elements (e.g., <meta> elements); and they are often simply wrong, as comments often are (since people edit the code but forget to edit the comments). -- Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Received on Saturday, 13 May 2006 12:53:43 UTC