Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 08/17/05 22:44

"Albert Wiersch" <mrinternetnewsREMOVEUPPERCASETOREPLY@wiersch.com>
wrote:

> but it should be clear how limited a real validator is

It performs a well-defined job, as opposite to looking here and there and
making proposals and issuing error messages based on someone's opinions.

> and that HTML
> linters and checkers can find many issues that real validators can't.

You mean like the non-issue that your phoney validator reports as an error?
It's sad that there are no good HTML linters (actually never were), but
it's probably too late now. That, however, is not a reason to pay for a
broken checker called, in an intentionally misleading way, a validator.

> This is just one of the cases where a "non-real" validator found what
> you would call a "futile" attribute. Obviously it is not good form to
> use futile attributes.

That's your opinion. It is based on limited experience with the practice of
HTML authoring. And it is certainly objectively wrong to call a futile
attribute an error when it in fact conforms to any relevant specification.

> I don't think you'd disagree with that.

Then you are wrong.

I see little reason to remove futile attributes, if a document contains
them as by-products of some HTML generator or as holdovers from some
previous version of the document where they were not futile, or maybe in
preparation for the next version that will drop the "f" from futility.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

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