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Posted by Ben C on 08/11/07 11:49
On 2007-08-10, Craig <netburgher@REMOVEgmail.com> wrote:
> Ben C wrote:
>> On 2007-08-10, Albert Wiersch <donotreply@123donotreply123.com> wrote:
>>> "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> wrote in message
>>> news:pmLui.204798$ln1.192950@reader1.news.saunalahti.fi...
>>>> - -
>>>>> This is a very good HTML editor.
>>>> Check Google Groups for alt.html discussions on this phoney "validator".
>>> And be sure to read the discussion as to why "validator" makes sense
>>> to most people (say 99% of them) and why the program is often bashed
>>> by a small number of people who don't like the name.
>>
>> It's not just the name. I object to the program and everything it stands
>> for.
>>
>>> The people who talk bad about it also don't really know anything about
>>> CSE HTML Validator, except they like to bash it.
>>
>> It's not that I _like_ to bash it. I consider it a duty.
>
> Ben or Jukka;
>
> Would either of you be willing to outline the criticisms that Ben's
> referring to? The best I can gather so far, one criticism is that CSE
> refers to its syntax checker(?) as a validator, a name usually ascribed
> to the W3C site functions.
The name is misleading, but what I really don't like about the product
is that it encourages completely the wrong way of going about things.
What's the point of an "HTML Editor" at all? HTML is text and there are
plenty of text editors. Invest a bit of effort in learning how to use
one of the more powerful ones and you soon will be able to do everything
the CSE editor does and much more.
A case in point is its various crude "tools" (I think there's one called
the "template" tool for example). So if you want to do the exact thing
the CSE Editor gives you a button for, you click the button. But what if
you want something slightly different? What do you do? Hunt around for a
more expensive version of the editor that has the precise feature you're
looking for? Submit a feature request? Of course not, you write it
yourself in five minutes using the proper editor or scripting languages
you've spent a little worthwhile time getting to know. That's what
anyone who has a clue does.
In order to write HTML pages it is better to understand some of the
basics of text editing, of HTML, and of authoring for the web. I don't
say this because I snootily think only "qualified" or "competent" people
should be allowed to write for the web. On the contrary my point is that
these basics are easy to learn, and all the information and tools needed
are freely available. Fortunately that's how things are done on
computers nowadays.
Finally, if you find the earlier discussion on alt.html, one poster very
quickly found a bug in the CSE "Validator"'s HTML parser. Now software
has bugs in it, that's to be expected, but Albert Wiersch's response
wasn't. In a variant of divine command theory, he denied that it was bug
claiming that whatever the CSE Validator pronounced was correct by
definition. That kind of attitude is worthy of a Microsoft product
manager.
Use a good text editor, tidy, the W3C validators and read a couple of
tutorials. That's much better advice to anyone than to buy the CSE
product, even if it is free for 17.5 hours on some special day of the
year. He can keep it.
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