Re: Message about "face" in HTML 3.2 document

On Thursday 10 September 2009, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> Ville Skyttä wrote:
> > On Monday 31 August 2009, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> >> Attribute "foo" is not a valid attribute. Did you mean "onkeydown" or
> >> "nohref"?
> >>
> >> I could not have imagined that they invented something _that_ absurd
> >> in trying to make the misguided heuristics "smarter".
> >
> > This is nothing new nor intentional.  I'm fairly certain you knew
> > that and just wanted to insult someone.
>
> You're wrong then, no matter how certain you were. I had not seen a
> confusing message of _that_ kind before, and what else could it be than a
> failed attempt to fix the feature?

Just something that nobody had encountered or reported?  I don't remember 
seeing _that_ absurd suggestions from the validator either.

What I thought was an insult attempt was the "... they invented something 
_that_ absurd ..." part.  If it wasn't and you actually think someone 
did/invented that on purpose: rest assured, nobody did.  Besides, as I said 
earlier, this is nothing new, and not caused by the fix attempts.  The same 
problem has been there since the introduction of this feature as far as I can 
tell, you can still verify that with the validator.w3.org instance where no 
fix attempts have been applied to my knowledge.

And just in case you're wondering, I didn't participate in implementation of 
this feature.  The related reports/feedback I remember reading have 
concentrated on upper/lowercase silliness in the suggestions which is a 
manifestation of the same underlying problem but unfortunately one which makes 
it sound fixable and didn't reveal the problem's full extent (speaking 
obviously only for myself).  The reproducers you now provided do.  That kind 
of understanding is something I need before ripping out features, fairly 
innocent looking case sensitivity issues based on which some people guess 
(although correctly in this case it turns out (assuming I'm correct now that 
the feature is unfixable as is)) that the feature is a dud and should be 
removed are not enough, especially when dealing with code written by others.

Received on Thursday, 10 September 2009 20:40:59 UTC