HTML tagging error ettiquette

[Araby Greene]

The author is probably well aware of the wretched excess of HTML tags
introduced by some WYSISYG editors. The example in Sheryl Dwinnell's
message is typical of Netscape Composer, which puts a nbsp; tag
*everywhere* there is a space at the beginning or end of a line, and many
other unecessary places as well. 

Composer is extremely convenient to use when reviewing Web sites, then
dragging and dropping their links into a Web page, but it introduces the
extra nbsp; tags. Double font tags are introduced in Composer whenever you
highlight a block and change the font attributes to more than one
attribute, say, bold and italic.  Sometimes, I pull such files into HotDog
and eliminate all the extraneous tags, but there isn't always time for
elegance, especially when we encourage novice authors to use Composer to
produce good *content* files.

I've certainly been guilty of such inelegant files when putting together a
library orientation for a class.  It gets the job done on time, and while
I cringe at the HTML, expedience is a plus. I think it's kind of snotty to
point out that people's files aren't up to snuff, when they are probably
aware of their failings. If you want to see really awful HTML, look at a
file that has been done in MS Publisher; the end result is a flexible,
precise layout with the a too-high price of the most jumbled looking
tables coding you'll probably ever see.

My worst experience with Composer was a datafile that had a simple
<pre></pre> tag pair enclosing a large ASCII database report. I wanted to
correct a simple mistake and pulled it up in Composer, which introduced
over *8800* &nbsp; tags! It took HotDog a very long time to reduce this
file to a resonable size with search and replace. 

Araby Greene

___________________________________________________________

Araby Greene                    (704)251-6632
Electronic Resources            greene at bulldog.unca.edu
& Government Information        http://www.unca.edu/~greene
Ramsey Library, UNC-Asheville   http://www.unca.edu/library
___________________________________________________________