DU said:
I'm not changing a single word here of my post. You're reliably
activating standards compliant rendering mode when you include a
doctype declaration (it's mandatory)
Mandatory for what? Processing by tagsoup manglers? GAL
and you can reliably trigger it
No, you cannot. Web-wowsers triggering pleonasm-mode when the
declaration is not on the first line of the document instance, like M$
Losedoze Exploder does, are out of the author's control.
The only thing you can *reliably* trigger as an author is quirks mode.
Hence my (practical) objections. At least, it's quite unlikely that
third party software at the client side or a remote proxy would insert
document type declarations into document instances.
when you use a strict dtd or a strict definition (if that is what you
really wish me to say).
You don't 'use definitions' by the means of doctype declarations.
Because you *cannot*. A doctype declaration includes a couple of
formal, syntactic rules in the document instance that sports the
declaration. There's *no association* with a *definition* involved.
A wide majority of reasonable people would find your nitpicking on
vocabulary out of proportions and sterile.
I'm pretty sure that you are right. There's a saying about numbers,
flies and reasonable nutrition. I'm not prepared to fight the
marketroid department. Point for you.
An UA that treats a markup declaration as a processing instruction is
still broken. That's not a question of vocabulary. Incorrect
vocabulary does increase the half-life time of urban legends, though.
What really matters here is
that 70% of all browsers out there can trigger standards rendering
mode where benefits for both users and web designers are a major issue
and a considerable gain.
On Usenet, mailing lists and IRL I still see a lot of people who gain
nothing but headache by doctype switching. And I can sympathize with
that. As far as *standards* are concerned, one is required to RTFM, not
some ad-hoc excuse for documentation of one or the other vendor of
<abbr/BAD/ implementations.
FYI, web designers (webstandards.org) fought
FYI, my mother used to say:
If you cannot say something good about somebody…
Well, here's to mom.
and pressured during months and years Microsoft so that it would fix
the box model and other css issues like margin:auto (1). Now, that it
has been fixed in MSIE 6 for windows (1), it's all up to web designers
to write their code accordingly.
It hasn't been *fixed*; you are allowed to toy around a bit at own risk.
People tend to avoid reading drool proof papers until their bitter end:
| In standards-compliant mode, compatibility with other versions of
| Internet Explorer is not guaranteed. When standards-compliant mode is
| switched on, the rendering behavior of documents might differ in
| future versions of Internet Explorer. You should not use this mode for
| content that is fixed in nature, such as content that is stored on a
| CD.
<msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnie60/html/cssenhancements.asp>
Let's stress the practical implications of the matter:
You (id est one, or at least I) still has to cope with at least M$IE 5
and 5.5 among the notoriously broken UAs. So any conditional so-called
'css-enhancements' in one particular version don't gain you any benefit
(besides the fact that you cannot guarantee this misfeature in the first
place). What you *do* gain, are a couple of *new* bugs which are
*exclusive* to 'standard-compliant mode'. No, thanks.
On a side note, Opera 7 is an example of quantum bogodynamics par
excellence, where you can get an intentionally broken box model that
won't be fixed by exploiting those nifty parsing bugs one's style sheet
used to be cluttered with.
You can bitch and rant as much as you
want: the reality of such responsibility is irrefutable.
The only thing irrefutable to me is that we are talking about opt-out
here. I have the same warm feelings for that as for any other 'service'
that requires that. So far for (bitch|rant)ing. YMMV
So, what's your problem with that??
The cure is worse than the disease. Got pain in your big toe? Cut off
the leg. Hallelujah, it's a miracle -- praise the lord.
