[whatwg] markup as authored in practice

[James Graham]

Elliotte Harold wrote:
> I don't believe most web documents are hand authored any more. Consider 
> that essentially every page generated by Blogger, Moveable Type or 
> WordPress is not hand authored. Almost every page at sites like 
> Amazon.com or walmart.com is not hand authored. Hand authoring is a 
> distinct minority on the web today.

OK, so how many of those sites produce well formed code? If the tools 
will save us all, why hasn't it happened yet? As I said, tool authors 
prioritize their budget for things other than well-formnedness of the 
output - things that will actually benefit the tool users and site 
customers. Moreover, XML is an entirely unacceptable risk for any 
business - it's too easy to accidentally transmit malformed data and 
knock the site out. Why do that when you have the option of using a UA 
mode that supports error recovery?


>> Out in the real world, not everyone gives a shit about markup 
>> standards, but that doesn't certainly doesn't mean that their content 
>> isn't worth viewing. For example, the majority of people who are 
>> likely to want to publish mathematics on the web are professional 
>> scientists or engineers. However, in my experience, the fraction of 
>> such people who are competent to reliably produce valid XML is 
>> tiny[1]. By insisting on XML you are effectively preventing these 
>> people from publishing in their field of expertise. The same is 
>> presumably true of artists and SVG - even if they have tools to 
>> produce all of the graphics, how many will be able to keep the 
>> surrounding XHTML document well formed, much less valid? 
> 
> I work with these folks on a regular basis. Those that aren't competent 
> to do this all use DreamWeaver anyway; that is when they aren't 
> designing sites that are just one big Flash app.

I'm totally lost about your point. You seem to have changed from saying 
"producing valid XML is easy - any non-bozo can do it" to "well it's not 
easy but the tools will save us all".



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