On Wed, 24 May 2000 20:20:40 -0500, Glenn McCorkle wrote:
> On Mon, 22 May 2000 09:47:35 -0500, Samuel W. Heywood wrote:
> <snip>
>> Does anyone think that it may be possible, practical, or feasible for
>> ISPs to monitor web pages for standards compliance so as to not permit
>> the posting of pages that are not "standards-compliant" with respect to
>> use of proper tags? I think the www community would be very grateful to
>> ISPs that would do this.
> IMO, This would not be practical or feasible.
> It would be the same as asking Michael to check each one these messages
> for "proper English grammor" before allowing it to be sent back out to
> each list member.;-))
Hello Glenn,
I disagree, and I don't like the analogy. First of all there is no
rule requiring list members to post their messages in English, and
there appear to be no pressures on list members to refrain from
colloquialisms, slang expressions, and other departures from "correct
grammer", as long as we stay within the bounds of decency.
Of course I can agree that it is indeed impossible to write a program to
check for "proper English grammar", despite the claims of some developers
who are working on it. What constitutes proper grammar is, in some cases,
merely a matter of opinion.
It is, however, quite possible to write programs that can do a really
good job in checking for errors in languages intended to be interpreted
only by machines. Fortunately, machines are not capable of having an
opinion. One of their most interesting features is that they never argue
with us.
Sam Heywood
-- This mail was written by user of Arachne, the Ultimate Internet Client
