Re: validator.w3.org and XHTML

olivier Thereaux wrote:
>
> Hi Shane, all.
>
> On 8-Dec-08, at 10:46 AM, Shane McCarron wrote:
> (about) http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2008/ED-xhtml-media-types-20081126/
>> The whole document is an informative section.  There is nothing 
>> normative in it.  It is a (draft) Note.
>
> That does not tell me whether or not it is OK to have a tool like the 
> markup validator output "info" (or warning) statements based on this 
> information, given that they address a very real and practical problem.
There has been some debate about this.  In the current (not yet 
uploaded) draft this is not prohibited.  I think that there is value in 
telling people about use that would potentially cause portability 
issues.  It is not clear to me how to do this in a way that does not 
give more weight to these guidelines than they deserve though.  The 
Guidelines are just that.  You do not need to follow them.  In theory, 
only people who are writing XHTML that is to be delivered as text/html 
to legacy user agents need worry about these.  In reality, that is 
everyone who is writing XHTML for web, since the web has IE, and IE 
doesn't support XHTML. 

It's not that we don't appreciate the problem - we do.  We just don't 
know how to give some people good advice without giving others bad 
advice - in particular when we don't know what problem they are trying 
to solve.  Perhaps if the validator had an /option/ that turned on/off 
this mode, then the user could decide what they cared about?
>
>> And Olivier - it has NOT been published as a Note.  We are still 
>> editing.  Once it has been published, we will let you know.
>
> OK, got confused by “W3C Note 26 November 2008”. You might want to 
> s/Note/Editor's DRAFT/ or something.
Hmm - I will look at that.  Note that we had intended to publish on 1 
December, but then some helpful person (thanks David) sent in a bunch of 
comments that we are still integrating.

-- 
Shane P. McCarron                          Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120
Managing Director                            Fax: +1 763 786-8180
ApTest Minnesota                            Inet: shane@aptest.com

Received on Monday, 8 December 2008 16:06:15 UTC