Posted by TaliesinSoft on 02/16/07 02:05

On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 19:17:55 -0600, dorayme wrote (in article
<doraymeRidThis-D5990E.12175516022007@news-vip.optusnet.com.au>):

> In article <0001HW.C1FA5A300009C20FB022094F@news.supernews.com>,
> TaliesinSoft <taliesinsoft@mac.com> wrote:
>
>> Oops, I forgot, validation is apparently useless.

That was my not so good momentary attempt at being a bit cynical!

> To point out the limitations of validators, what they can and cannot do,
> what their real purpose is and what you can profitably use them for,
> should not invite this reaction. It is a rather complicated thing but
> basically a validator will tell you if a document conforms in certain
> respects to the declared or assumed standard for that doc in a narrow
> formal sense. It says nothing about semantics, the meaningfulness,
> neatness, easy readability or accessibility of your efforts, much less the
> quality of being easy to upgrade. All these latter mentioned qualities are
> notoriously difficult for earthling created machines to understand. Not
> impossible but difficult.

I'll certainly agree that validators are essentially limited to to verifying
that a site's code adheres to established rules and not on the quality and/or
neatness and such of the code. But they do provide a hint at how well the
code will process on standards conforming browsers.

> Earthlings, on the other hand, are meaning machines par excellence. That
> is what they are good for apart from killing. And even then, note,
> earthlings have meaningful reasons to do so (I said meaningful, not good
> reasons.


--
James Leo Ryan ..... Austin, Texas ..... taliesinsoft@mac.com

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