Validator program

[Blinky the Shark]

Man

I just had to laugh. Now you are going to bring up top versus bottom
posting!

http://blinkynet.net/comp/toppost.html

 

[BootNic]

On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:46:34 -0700

http://blinkynet.net/comp/toppost.html

LOL, tis this why ya can smell em long before ya see em.

--

BootNic Mon Aug 25, 2008 07:42 pm
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy
enough people to make it worth the effort.
*Herm Albright*

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[Neredbojias]

Most people want their HTML to display well in real-world browsers and
that is the main purpose of CSE HTML Validator.

When "non-standard" constructs are used, CSE HTML Validator will notify
the developer. The developer can choose to use it anyway or can change
the message to an error message and decide not to use it. CSE HTML
Validator leaves it up to the developer to decide how they want their
site to be.

Well ok, if I understand that right, it seems pretty reasonable to me. If
the software identifies any & all non-standard/non-valid markup, I don't
think calling it a "validator" is too much of a stretch.

What good is a standard if it's not followed in the real world? What
good is a web page that is designed to the standards if it doesn't work
in real-world browsers? CSE HTML Validator tries to let developers know
about issues such as these:

Fine, but that is essentially irrelevant to the premise of it being a
"validator" by strict definition. Many standards don't work in ie but that
doesn't mean that non-standard substitutes should be promoted as a "valid
workaround". However, there are valid alternate methods such as conditional
comments which might be mentioned to advantage.

1. Constructs that work in the real-world but are not standards
compliant. 2. Standards compliant constructs that don't work with
real-world browsers.

Again, the developer gets to choose how to handle these issues with
regards to accepting them anyway or removing them.

As I said, if non-valid markup is identified, I have no problem with it.

 

[Neredbojias]

OK, that is because CSE HTML Validator is designed to enforce better markup
in these cases than DTD validators. This is by design and not a bug.

Oops, what is this? If there was any implication that at all that the
missing tag was an error in validity, your detractors are correct.

Incidentally, one person's "better markup" is another's "pure shlock". Who
decides what is "better" and why?

 

[dorayme]

BootNic Mon Aug 25, 2008 07:42 pm
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy
enough people to make it worth the effort.
*Herm Albright*

Which may be behind the disdain some people have for Poppy in
Happy-Go-Lucky.

 

[John Hosking]

That's very unfair. By the grace of god some people have not kf'd you in
spite of your annoying habit of top posting. Look, Jack, I am going to
level with you. I have come to earth to be kf'd just as Christ did to
absorb man's guilt onto His shoulders. So don't do this to Sherm, he is
not good in kfs, he suffers needlessly. Please, please take me.

And it came to pass, as was foretold by the prophets, that dorayme, the
crafter of pages, who was also called Peter, and Simon, and Edward also,
likewise Ted, and Hildegard, and a host of other names not to be printed
in This Book, did knowingly surrender to The One With The Miscapitalised
Name.

And The One With The Miscapitalised Name slew dorayme, adding dorayme to
his killfile. And no man did speak, nor make to stop the deed, nor did
anyone complain, nor call the cops, for they were on the other side of
the World from dorayme and the land of the pocketed beasts, and did sleep.

And dorayme gave his life for the sins of us all. But did rise up again,
upon the next day, and did go for a swim, just like always.

 

[dorayme]

And it came to pass, as was foretold by the prophets, that dorayme, the
crafter of pages, who was also called Peter, and Simon, and Edward also,
likewise Ted, and Hildegard, and a host of other names not to be printed
in This Book, did knowingly surrender to The One With The Miscapitalised
Name.

And The One With The Miscapitalised Name slew dorayme, adding dorayme to
his killfile. And no man did speak, nor make to stop the deed, nor did
anyone complain, nor call the cops, for they were on the other side of
the World from dorayme and the land of the pocketed beasts, and did sleep.

And dorayme gave his life for the sins of us all. But did rise up again,
upon the next day, and did go for a swim, just like always.

And this Lazarus found the water agreeably refreshing, not least because
He drew away from them and stood apart from their miserable cowardly
shirking natures that would balk at the winter seas.

 

[Nico Schuyt]

Nico Schuyt wrote:

It is generally a Bad Idea to adopt "acceptable (to you)"
definitions of words that do not agree with standard usage.
Doing so hinders communication. You would be better served
by coining a new term rather than using an existing word
with a nonstandard definition.

I agree with that.
The CSE however could be promising if it tested against W3C-standards and
*in addition* reported things like the unclosed <dt> or <dl> (as warning)
In that case I see no problem in using 'CSE Validator' as product name

 

[Blinky the Shark]

I agree with that.
The CSE however could be promising if it tested against W3C-standards and

And if frogs had wings they wouldn't thump their little frog butts every
time they jumped.

 

[Nico Schuyt]

And if frogs had wings they wouldn't thump their little frog butts
every time they jumped.

With the present state of genetic manipulation I see no problem in that.

 

[RW]

Nico Schuyt schreef:

An acceptable (to me) definition of 'validation' is: Determination of the
correctness of the products of software
development with respect to the user needs and requirements.
It seems to me that's exactly what CSE does.

Yeah, right!
And every user gets his or hers own validator.

Pimp my validator.

 

[Nico Schuyt]

Nico Schuyt schreef:


Yeah, right!
And every user gets his or hers own validator.
Pimp my validator.

In compliance with your needs and requirements

 

[Andy Dingley]

Guinness vs Bud? Com 'on! Except for washing grease off of engine parts
who would actually drink a Bud?

Well I would, but that's because I live in a place where our "Bud"
comes from the right country and "Bohemia" isn't just a corner of
Greenwich Village.

 

[Chris F.A. Johnson]

Which is what CSE HTML Validator Std/Pro does if you turn on the DTD
validator checking by clicking a single option or menu item. You will get
DTD based validation as well.

IOW, it is _not_ a validator unless you turn that feature on.

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

IOW, it is _not_ a validator unless you turn that feature on.

And as a validator, it is hardly any better than any of the free validators
around. It could be worse, though.

As a heuristic checker, it cannot be compared to validators, since
validators aren't heuristic checkers. But I would not expect a heuristic
checker to be good if its author has publicly expressed ignorance of markup
and web authoring issues and continues to sell the checker as a validator.

Yucca

 

[Neredbojias]

The error message wasn't "Unclosed <dt> is standard but worse". It was


Albert decides what is better. Why? He won't say. You are welcome to
take it up in his forums which he moderates. In the case of unclosed
<dt>, it looks like he decided it was better because that was easier
than fixing his broken parser which got it wrong.

I see. IOW, past stubbornesses have lead to the besmirching of his
reputation despite the (apparent) fact that the program is a decent
"checker" of some sort. That's kind of pathetic really. It seemed like
the poor guy was being over-enthusiastically persecuted, but in light of
the facts...

 

[Blinky the Shark]

With the present state of genetic manipulation I see no problem in that.

No Frogs Were Harmed In The Cloning Of This Frog

 

[Blinky the Shark]

John

I like that. I'm not sure I really know what you said, but I like it.

Jack

PS Is my name above better now?

It's still on the wrong end of the post.

 

[dorayme]

As a heuristic checker, it cannot be compared to validators, since
validators aren't heuristic checkers. But I would not expect a heuristic
checker to be good if its author has publicly expressed ignorance of markup
and web authoring issues and continues to sell the checker as a validator.

So why is it only hardly any better rather than somewhat or much worse
than the free checkers? Luck?

 

[Neredbojias]

Guy Macon put it very well in his last post in this thread. It's all
part of a picture of a product that's a throwback to the bad old days of
selling crap software to people who don't know better while being
deceptive about its capabilities and not really telling anyone what it
actually does.

Nobody needs to waste their time with products like that. Of course lots
of people say "I bought it and I like it and would recommend it to
others". That doesn't prove anything except that they were unlucky that
no-one showed them how to use decent tools (e.g. Tidy, a real validator,
and a reasonable text editor).

It's kinda funny, this -

Besides flirting with Frontpage at the very, very beginning, I never used
anything to assist me with html except what I consider a good text editor -
NoteTab. (And in that I don't even use the html-color option function.) At
first my pages hardly ever validated 1st-time-out, and, of course, there were
many mistakes. Now, about 2-3 years later, I guess, they almost never
_don't_ validate 1st-time-out and the mistakes (mine) are few. It may have
been harder initially, but I'm stubborn and really wanted to _learn_ the
craft, not just "turn-out pages". There is no substitute for knowing what
you're doing, so using a any kind of validator (or linter) as a crutch
instead of a true validity-checker seems to me pure foolishness. And, of
course, if said program doesn't actually check true validity, it is anathema
to the actual goal of learning something. Ergo, suggesting "what works in
the real world" is, at best, a disservice.