- From: olivier Thereaux <ot@w3.org>
- Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 10:49:12 -0400
- To: "Frank Ellermann" <hmdmhdfmhdjmzdtjmzdtzktdkztdjz@gmail.com>
- Cc: www-validator@w3.org
Hi Frank, On 8-Aug-08, at 7:22 PM, Frank Ellermann wrote: > Something with the added "historical HTML i18n" isn't as > expected: > > | the Document Type (-//IETF//DTD HTML i18n//EN) is not in the > | validator's catalog > > Did you use another public identifier ? PubID = -//IETF//DTD HTML i18n/EN ouch, looks like a typo in http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/validator/htdocs/config/types.conf.diff?r1=1.35&r2=1.36&f=h > The "whatsnew" file says: > > | Conformance: The validator now warns about incorrect > | public/system identifiers combinations > > They are not really "incorrect", or are they ? The > warning uses the adjective "inconsistent". Would you call this correct? <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> That was precisely the kind of cases we found in the wild. See: http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=4848 A lot of people edit the DOCTYPE by hand even when they don't have a clue what it is. If the validator tells them "your doctype doesn't look right" we may help them fix their error. Sure, this may not be "right" in theory, but in practice, I'm sure throwing a warning to enforce that DOCTYPE declarations are consistent with what the specs say does more good than harm. > Users are in the same position wrt to their own local > tools, and their set of "known" public identifiers is > different from what the validator knows. > > Shouldn't they be able to use system identifiers that > make sense from their local POV ? You are talking about a very small fraction of users who * know their SGML by heart, * know what they are doing when they edit a SI in a document, *and are able to *understand* the warning from the validator, and *assess* whether it applies. For the rest of us, the warning is useful.
Received on Sunday, 10 August 2008 14:49:46 UTC