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

Marc Andreessen (marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu)
Wed, 18 Aug 93 18:34:52 -0500

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