Re: Web standard compliance, accessibility and free software was Re: Frod [was Re: [Fsfe-uk] Free internet (technologically)]

[Robin Green]

On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 11:15:46AM +0100, Simon Waters wrote:
> I know from my own pitiful attempt at a company website I reverted to
> hand correcting the HTML in order to ensure it passes the various
> validations, this is clearly not the way to "solve" either issue in the
> long run.

Especially since so much HTML is *generated*, i.e. it's some form of dynamic
content these days.

What we really need is a piece of code that can prove that code will never 
produce
anything other than valid (X)HTML! I'm a recent convert to formal methods,
and people say "Yeah, sounds good, but what can you use them for?" - well, 
here's
a decent application - prove that code always outputs valid markup! With
a well-structured programming language, this is perfectly doable.
(Ehhh... and left as an exercise to the reader ;-)

-- 
Robin

"It doesn't make sense. How would you transfer the product but not have the 
copyright attached?"
-- Darl McBride, SCO CE on the contract SCO signed with Novell (which "doesn't 
make sense"!)

Governments do not exist to provide lucrative contracts for proprietary software
developers.