[html4all] 5 gears in reverse - anne v k enters the alt attribute debate

Fri Sep 21 05:54:59 PDT 2007

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007 13:52:07 +0200, Philip Taylor (Webmaster)  
<P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk> wrote:

> It is, sadly, clear that Anne does not care too
> much about standards.

I am Anne's manager, and I consider him a friend. And I think it is  
totally untrue to suggest that he doesn't care about standards.

>  Here are the first two
> lines from his site --
>
>> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN">
>> <!-- It’s valid, sure. -->
>
> Putting the assertion to the test reveals :
>
>> This page is not Valid HTML 4.01 Strict!
>> Result: 	Failed validation, 4 Errors

Putting the validator to the test by reading the actual specification[1]  
it is attempting to validate to, we find that

[[[
The FPI for the Transitional HTML 4.01 DTD is:

         "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
]]]

In other words, that validator is making a requirement out of a common  
habit. Anne is correct, the validator is wrong.

This is not a surprise to me. He and I disagree pretty passionately about  
the right way to do all kinds of things, but he is *very* knowledgeable on  
standards and what they really allow and don't, and I generally trust him  
(and for that matter quite a lot of other people) over any program when it  
comes to interpreting a specification.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/dtd.html

Cheers

Chaals

PS I believe the idea of this group was that it would focus on important  
stuff in an environment free of rudeness and disrespect. I consider ad  
hominem attacks to be very antipathetic to that goal, and would love them  
to vanish from this list. I get enough mail already.

-- 
   Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
   hablo español  -  je parle français  -  jeg lærer norsk
chaals at opera.com   http://snapshot.opera.com - Kestrel (9.5α1)