[Sigia-l] AIfIA Goals 2004 Survey Results

[Karl Groves]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org 
> [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On Behalf Of
> Livia Labate
> Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 9:46 AM
> To: sigia-l at asis.org
> Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] AIfIA Goals 2004 Survey Results
> 
> 
> : Adherence to standards requires an understanding of the 
> : standards themselves and the reasons for them.
> 
> Does it? I have used screws and nails all my life but only 
> last year I 
> read this fabulous piece on their standards (the article I recommend 
> every time the standards issue comes up - 
> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.01/standards_pr.html) The point 
> is, it had no impact on my usage of the nails and screws. My previous 
> ignorance on the matter had no interference with the 
> application of the 
> standards.

Again, more red herrings.
Let's take a different standard - HTML
Web pages are created every day that use bogus, deprecated, or altogether wrong markup.
i.e. - "<p><b>The Page Heading Text</b></p>" 
Well, the elements are certainly nested properly and will therefore display well, but what does <b> mean?  Fat text. It would be more appropriate for the heading of the page to be marked with <h1>. It then adheres not only to the standard (there's nothing invalid about the example that uses <b>) but is also the correct element and can then also supply semantic meaning to that section of text.

So again, standards are worthless when applied by the ignorant.  In the example above, a clueless newbie could easily get their page to pass through a validation tool, but it would take a skilled web author to use the most appropriate application of the standard for the task they are approaching.

Does it work to bang a nail with the heel of your shoe? Sure. 
Is a hammer a much better tool? Of course.  
Does the nail have a better chance of getting driven straight, quickly if the hammer is weilded by a skilled carpenter? Definitely.

-Karl