100% - 80% = ?

[Peter C. Gorman]

Tom Dowling writes:

>My organization is now testing or using production (!)
>versions of web interfaces from 5 different systems or
>database vendors, and not one of them reliably puts out
>HTML which could pass even a comparably forgiving
>validator like WebLint.

Hey, why worry about little details when you can have a High-Impact Web
Site (TM) to show your Netscape users?

The tools that generate sloppy markup are bad enough, but what about those
(such as the one from a well-known manufacturer of Adobe products) which
actively *prevent* you from writing standard markup - merrily converting
all of your <p align=center> into <center>? I have yet to see a single HTML
editor that knows how to do <p>...</p>, though I haven't been shopping for
a while.

You're entirely right that people don't seem to even be aware of the fact
that there is such a thing as 'standard' HTML. Part of the reason may be
the sluggishness of the standards process (where is there a valid, i.e.
unexpired, HTML 3.0 specification?) compared to the ability of well-funded
vendors to keep the spotlight on their "innovations". Everyone wants to be
up with the latest kewl stuff.

The danger is not just that pages will look bad for a significant number of
users, but that content will be lost. Now that there are things like
talking web browsers the need for HTML (and structural markup in general)
seems even more important, especially as more full-text resources become
available on the net. What would you think of an LMS that wasn't fussy
about subfield delimiters or that interpreted MARC tags in its own
"value-enhanced" way?


PG
_______________________________
Peter C. Gorman
Automation Help Desk
Memorial Library
University of Wisconsin
pcgorman at facstaff.wisc.edu