Re: browsing vs validation, or, why not to make software robust

marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 93 18:34:52 -0500
From: marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)
Message-id: <9308182334.AA06517@wintermute.ncsa.uiuc.edu>
To: Terry Allen <terry@ora.com>
Cc: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch, ebina@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: browsing vs validation, or, why not to make software robust
In-reply-to: <199308182310.AA14110@rock.west.ora.com>
References: <199308182310.AA14110@rock.west.ora.com>
X-Md4-Signature: a77a850f0e1178b885ba394f4601a41f
Status: RO
Terry Allen writes:
> No lint is needed; we have a DTD.  That's supposed to be our
> interface between documents and browsers.  If you don't want to
> report errors, well, we'll have to live with that.  But if you
> aren't planning on using the HTML+ DTD as an interface with us
> document editors, please tell us now.
>
> We've gotta know when our docs are valid without running them 
> through every parser.  Our mechanism for doing that is SGML, with
> all its warts.  

I don't understand this.

Show me an HTML document that conforms to the DTD that Mosaic does not
handle correctly, and it will be a bug and we will fix it.

When we implement HTML+ support, show me an HTML+ document that
conforms to the DTD that Mosaic does not handle correctly, and it will
also be a bug and we will fix it.

In your role as a creator of valid HTML documents with DTD in hand,
what problems can you possibly have with this situation?  What are we
doing wrong?

> Perhaps I have a beta version, but I often get messages about
> characters my terminal can't render (that's what I meant by
> error messages).  

That's Motif and your X font set.

> I'm sure I'm not alone now in wondering how your browser deals
> with markup, Marc.  Can you give us a brief description?

I don't understand the question.  It parses valid HTML and displays
it, properly.

Marc