D
dorayme
Bone Ur said:
You read my story about the history of the letters?
You read my story about the history of the letters?
T
Toby A Inkster
Jukka said:
Indeed. Both use the age-old principle of "if it's important, make it move
around or become invisible sporadically to stop people from reading it".
--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.17.14-mm-desktop-9mdvsmp, up 3 days, 22:15.]
Sharing Music with Apple iTunes
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2007/11/28/itunes-sharing/
F
freemont
I think you bloviate beautifully! ;-)
B
Bergamot
rf said:
Couldn't have said it better myself.
It needed to be said, IMO.
B
Ben C
On 2007-12-11 said:
It is also being suggested in CSS3:
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-box/#marquee
and there it is defined as a kind of overflow property, a bit like
scroll, but where the scrolling is animated.
That's a good way to define it. The thing that IE does is completely
unspecified and, quite apart from the animation, its external dimensions
are unlike any other kind of box in the CSS box model-- I think it's
usually effectively display: inline but the full width of its container.
B
Bone Ur
Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:09:44
GMT dorayme scribed:
I may have. Would it setup a syndrome in my brain wherein all the thoughts
would reverberate chaotically until the effect of your words died down
through the mercy of time? It's hard to recall things when exposed to such
conditions.
GMT dorayme scribed:
I may have. Would it setup a syndrome in my brain wherein all the thoughts
would reverberate chaotically until the effect of your words died down
through the mercy of time? It's hard to recall things when exposed to such
conditions.
D
dorayme
O great, I wake up and hoping to forget this nightmare, findBergamot said:Couldn't have said it better myself.
this! Together with his happy smile, the things he takes pleasure
in, artlessly and sadly evident!
I knew you had this reliable ally, rf, another person that has
been insolent to me previously and who, like you, is not inclined
to actually take up, without sarcasm or edgy curtness or without
other personal rudeness, the serious parts of things I say from
the very beginning.
No, you preferred to wait or concentrate on the chafe instead of
the substance, the later bullshit instead of the reasonably
relevant things to web matters first raised on this occasion.
I notice this generally humourless poster snipped your reference
to "Girl". It is certainly nothing to him. Your insolence is
nothing less than he would gleefully endorse. But I realise he is
not a sexist patronising ugly Australian male, the worst kind in
the world apart from a Serbian paramilitary, armed with a big
knife and powerful gun to make up for his own inadequacies
surrounded by his cheering leering mates in the Bosnia of the
1990s.
The first post was as substantial as I could muster on the
subject of marquees - I do not use this MS extension, I found it
hard to take it seriously but there were a few curiosities I
thought worth raising about it:
(1) I raised the question of validation. Comments on this from:
You - zero
This poster - zero
JK - something I am still baffled by! I said things about it
being hard or impossible to validate, (it being an MS extension).
He then decides, as is his way, to regard this as clueless. Of
course, it can be validated says he or something like this? Yeah?
What about you explaining this bit for the benefit of everyone in
this PhD subject of validation? Where were you when you might
have helped? Is it not practically and substantially true that if
you slip in a marquee in the useful dtds of today that your
documents will not validate? I did not say this was the end of
the world. Validation is not everything. But how clueless is
this? Clue me and others up in simple plain language that is
informative and not filled with your barefaced insolence.
(2) It can be used to bring out the different behaviours of
browsers. Why is iCab so inefficient in it, why MacIE, why is
Opera so smooth on my Mac in the scrolling of the marquee
content? OK, who knows? But at least, is it just my machine or
is this duplicated with others? These seem of web matter
interest, no?
You: silence
This poster: ditto;
JK: can you imagine JK seeing past my toy cars to come down to
earth from his lofty perch and discuss such mundane matters? I
forgive him these things.
I make a special exception for JK, he is beyond redeeming and his
character is so strong and fixed that nothing can move him. He
cannot even be reasonably argued with these days (at least not
here) except on very very narrow short and sharp technical facts
and even then it is hard for anyone to get their interpretation
of the context for such technicalities acknowledged. So I prattle
nervously a bit in response, his rudeness is of a cartoon quality
to me. He can say what he likes, he has credit with me in a way
you would not understand.
But you, you have been in debit since the time you made an
unprovoked attack on me ages ago. The debit reduced almost to
zero for a while when you restrained yourself. So I put you on
probation for a while and was generally cordial to you.
(3) It can be used for inline images, even the alt text scrolls
when the pics are unavailable (try it!). Comments form:
You - silence (I know... you "don't give a shit" ... but that
misses the point, you had an opportunity for more serious
intervention and what did you choose?)
This poster - zilch
JK - He was too busy with something else.
B
Ben C
On 2007-12-11 said:
I'm still waiting for my validation PhD to arrive in the post, but I
think the idea is you just make your own DTD which includes marquee, so
then it validates.
I can't see the point though. The reason why most people validate HTML
is that browsers are supposed to behave more predictably on valid HTML.
Something that isn't HTML but is valid SGML (is that what HTML + marquee
with a custom doctype allowing it technically is?) is completely wasted
on a web browser, which doesn't look at the DTD qua a DTD at all. The
most it does with the doctype is a crude string-match to turn on quirks
mode or not.
I'm pretty sure that's true. But also that all browsers will grok
marquee in some fashion anyway (even if just to ignore it) since they
weren't born yesterday.
D
dorayme
Ben C said:
Well, that is what I gathered actually, I got a bit worried I am
missing some obvious thing. It seemed to me there was some
misunderstanding, I certainly never think it is important at all
costs to validate and why would one bother to go the trouble for
a marquee or two [1]?
However, on my track tests, a fair few seem to handle it quite
well.
After all this, I am considering a PhD in "marquee website
technology".
But now I must get back to ironing out a 1 mm discrepancy in an
Illustrator file detined for a commercial print house (funny how
1 mm actually can count in such things but be a ridiculous
concern in website building!)
---------
[1] I would not, considering I only race cars with them, and as
everyone knows, there is nothing very respectable about
production car race gatherings, they can be quite rough, it would
be silly and not altogether honest to give it some sort of high
fallutin' respectable seal of approval.
J
Jukka K. Korpela
Scripsit Ben C:
Or use someone else's DTD that includes marquee. So it's the same as
with any validation.
The point of what? Validation? The point is to detect some of the stupid
markup errors, like spelling the end tag as</marque> and making your
page even more foolish than you meant to. Why would this matter less
just because you use nonstandard features? If you use words not in a
dictionary, you might still want to inform your spelling checker about
them, so that it will check that you don't misspell them occasionally.
That's because people have little idea of what validation is and how
browsers behave. I have mostly given up the idea of enlightening people
on this, partly because the W3C keeps disseminating disinformation on
this and promotes foolish "icons" for showing off that you have
Validated.
But the question was whether it is _difficult_ to validate a document
that uses marquee. Not whether it makes sense to do so.
Not any more than the same served as tag soup with no DTD declaration.
Stupid browsers, aren't they? But this relates to all DTD declarations
and all validation.
And any custom DTD triggers "standard mode", which is absurd but useful
if you know what you are doing. If it disturbs you and you really want
"quirks mode", you can always remove the doctype declaration after you
have validated the markup.
Where does this superstition about "useful dtds" come from? If you want
standards mode, custom DTD will give you that, or if you prefer, you can
always replace it with HTML 4.01 doctype, since beyond validation, the
doctype is really just a magic string for doctype sniffing.
Not all browsers grok it in any other sense than ignoring the marquee
markup just the same way they ignore the markup in <foobar>...</foobar>,
effectively turning it into ..., for any foobar markup they don't know.
But this has nothing to do with _validation_.
Or use someone else's DTD that includes marquee. So it's the same as
with any validation.
The point of what? Validation? The point is to detect some of the stupid
markup errors, like spelling the end tag as</marque> and making your
page even more foolish than you meant to. Why would this matter less
just because you use nonstandard features? If you use words not in a
dictionary, you might still want to inform your spelling checker about
them, so that it will check that you don't misspell them occasionally.
That's because people have little idea of what validation is and how
browsers behave. I have mostly given up the idea of enlightening people
on this, partly because the W3C keeps disseminating disinformation on
this and promotes foolish "icons" for showing off that you have
Validated.
But the question was whether it is _difficult_ to validate a document
that uses marquee. Not whether it makes sense to do so.
Not any more than the same served as tag soup with no DTD declaration.
Stupid browsers, aren't they? But this relates to all DTD declarations
and all validation.
And any custom DTD triggers "standard mode", which is absurd but useful
if you know what you are doing. If it disturbs you and you really want
"quirks mode", you can always remove the doctype declaration after you
have validated the markup.
Where does this superstition about "useful dtds" come from? If you want
standards mode, custom DTD will give you that, or if you prefer, you can
always replace it with HTML 4.01 doctype, since beyond validation, the
doctype is really just a magic string for doctype sniffing.
Not all browsers grok it in any other sense than ignoring the marquee
markup just the same way they ignore the markup in <foobar>...</foobar>,
effectively turning it into ..., for any foobar markup they don't know.
But this has nothing to do with _validation_.
B
Ben C
Speaking of racing cars, I made this Javascript game a while ago. It is
also smoothest in Opera.
http://www.tidraso.co.uk/mediums/games/speed-limit/
No marquee support required.
D
dorayme
This was not "the" question at all. It simply does not validate
in any practical context where an author wants to keep to best
practice and use 4.01 Strict for all the other things in his page
and site but wants to slip in some proprietary MS element on one
occasion. You are the one that has introduced this esoteric thing
of making up one's own dtd.
The way you went about this was clearly designed to make my
remark that one cannot validate pages if you throw in MS
extensions seem as foolish as possible. It was not as foolish as
you make out. You only need to see my cautioning as about
practical validation difficulties to have avoided this.
You could have easily have made the point about making up one's
own dtd etc as an interesting addition to the discussion. But
this would not have served *your* purpose as well.
Are we not all foolish enough without having to be put in stocks
and have rotten tomatoes thrown at us? Surely the various
realizations of our errors should be mortification enough?
D
dorayme
Ben C said:
<g>
J
Jukka K. Korpela
Scripsit dorayme:
It was exactly the question you raised by saying that such validation is
difficult. But do you really want to draw more attention to your failure
to understand the concept of validation?
Of course it does. You simply specify a DTD that defines such markup.
What else could you even try?
There's nothing esoteric about it, and in terms of validation, all DTDs
are equal (and W3C DTDs are _not_ more equal than others).
I could not possibly make it look more foolish than it is. You are
exaggerating my powers.
It was exactly the question you raised by saying that such validation is
difficult. But do you really want to draw more attention to your failure
to understand the concept of validation?
Of course it does. You simply specify a DTD that defines such markup.
What else could you even try?
There's nothing esoteric about it, and in terms of validation, all DTDs
are equal (and W3C DTDs are _not_ more equal than others).
I could not possibly make it look more foolish than it is. You are
exaggerating my powers.
B
Ben C
On 2007-12-12 said:
Of course they are more equal than others.
If I write SGML that validates against my own personal DTD (which for
example might require each SPAN to contain at least one P) and the
browser doesn't produce the DOM tree I'm expecting, then it's my fault.
But if I write valid HTML against the W3C DTDs and don't get the DOM
tree I'm expecting then I report it as a bug in the browser.
Since most people are writing HTML with the intention that it will be
processed by browsers, the W3C DTDs are the ones that matter.
Extending a W3C DTD by adding marquee, however, might be a useful thing
to do for catching spelling mistakes or other errors in the way in which
someone has decided to use it, as you have pointed out.
D
dorayme
"Jukka K. Korpela said:
It was not "exactly" the question. It was a question in your
mind. I am not saying it is not a good question or an interesting
one. But all "the" questions in your mind are not "the" questions
I raised. What I raised was the difficulty of getting MS
extensions in and getting practical validation to 100%. That is
what i had in my mind. No doubt I exaggerated the difficulty
because the business of making up one's own dtds did not occur to
me.
(Is this making up one's own dtd in *this* case like making a
smelly thing more pleasant by spraying it with perfume or
something? Or like a politician shopping around for a lawyer who
will give his crappy decisions a fig of respectability?)
There is no "of course" or "simply" about it. Perhaps 6 people in
this whole world know how to do this. Maybe more will know now
and never use it. I don't at all mind you raising interesting
issues and supplying all sorts of things here. But I am not at
all that keen on your unpleasant means. You seem to suppose that
you cannot supply information without putting someone in the
stocks and throwing rotten tomatoes at them.
No doubt, of course, my most entrenched enemies (you saw these
cockroaches crawl out to take pleasure in this recently) will
derive great merriment from your effort in this.
This sounds to me like saying of a boatload of people, some
convicted murderers, some rapists, some war criminals, some
bakers, parsons, rabbis and others that they are God's children
and therefore equal in one respect. It is special pleading that
simply refuses to acknowledge that the overwhelming best practice
for most folks to make webpages in present climate is to use 4.01
Strict.
Once again, on the ordinary but complicated things, you
misunderstand. The phrase "clearly designed to..." has no
implication of success.
There is no need, why on earth can't you see this, to be so
unpleasant.
M
mbstevens
dorayme said:
J
Jukka K. Korpela
Scripsit Ben C:
Please cite the relevant part of the SGML standard or the XML
specification if you think so. "In terms of validation" means _those_
terms.
Validation is about markup, not DOM or browsers.
Besides, if you try to nest a P inside a SPAN, things will go wrong in
browsers quite independently of the DTD you declare and independently of
validation.
Please cite the relevant part of the SGML standard or the XML
specification if you think so. "In terms of validation" means _those_
terms.
Validation is about markup, not DOM or browsers.
Besides, if you try to nest a P inside a SPAN, things will go wrong in
browsers quite independently of the DTD you declare and independently of
validation.
B
Ben C
They're equal in those terms. It was your parenthetical remark I was
disagreeing with.
But let's not quibble. Yes of course a validator just validates against
whatever DTD you tell it to, it doesn't care.
But what is the purpose of validation? Often because you intend to use
your markup as the input to some computer program one of whose implied
preconditions is that its input consist of a valid document according
to one or other from a set of particular DTDs.
In other words, give it valid input and it should do what you expect.
Give it invalid input and the results are undefined. Browsers are not
formally specified, but all the same, if valid HTML produces the wrong
DOM tree, most browser vendors would treat that as a bug and aim to fix
it.
Please explain. My understanding of a modern browser is basically this:
1. The HTML is parsed and the result is a DOM tree.
2. The DOM tree is rendered according to the CSS specification (taking
into account any styles you set).
3. The DOM tree can be further manipulated by JS.
Pretty much all the HTML does is give you a way to write down the
initial DOM tree. If the HTML is invalid, it's not defined what DOM tree
you're going to get-- typically browsers move some things around to
improve matters, and leave other things alone.
I just tried P inside SPAN in Firefox out of interest and it just gives
me a DOM tree containing a P inside a SPAN, so nothing unpredictable
there. Not a good example then.
Here is a better one:
<table>
<tr>
<span>hello</span>
<td>world</td>
</tr>
</table>
Now, if I didn't validate, I might expect to get this DOM tree
(fragment):
table
tr
span
td
which can be rendered perfectly well according to the CSS specification
using the recommended or any other initial styles for those elements (it
will involve the generation of anonymous table-family boxes).
Note also that I believe I can perfectly well construct such a DOM tree,
if that's what I want, using JS/DOM functions like appendChild. There's
nothing invalid about that as a DOM tree, it's only the corresponding
HTML markup that's invalid.
But actually, if I write that markup, Firefox gives me this DOM tree:
span
table
tr
td
And so this is the basic reason things go wrong (or unexpectedly) if I
write invalid HTML. What else will go wrong?
A
Andy Dingley
W3C DTDs _are_ "more equal", because they can be referred to by a
doctype declaration that also triggers a standards-based rendering
mode. AFAIK, there's no way to have a custom DTD (a legit SGML
feature) and to _also_ trigger standards rendering (highly HTML-
related and specific to the world of "web browsers" alone).