just so y'all understand, i sent joey
the .html version of my "alice" that
passes the validator -- backchannel --
and that's what his post was about...

and now i realize that "his" user agent
is one that he's programming himself...

i'm happy to help another programmer
track down some idiosyncrasies, joey,
and i'll send you a report backchannel.


>   Now, just to check my understanding,
>   this is a document that went
>   from PG-TEI -> zml -> HTML?

i started with plain-ascii text-files
-- the origin of which is irrelevant --
and compared them all to tweak a
consensus copy that was good .zml.

i then ran that through my text-to-html
converter.  for alice, i did this long ago,
and might have hand-tweaked things
after that conversion, as my converter is
still a work-in-progress, i can't remember.

last friday, you might or might not recall,
i turned my focus to "passing the validator"
-- only because i'm preparing a submission
to project gutenberg for a friend -- which
informed me of some small tweaks needed
to jump through that hoop.  i applied those
tweaks to the alice .html when marcello
tried to make "validation" an issue here...

to give you an idea of the necessary changes,
>   <center><h3><a href="#toc"> chapter one </a></h3></center>
passes the validator, but
>   <h3><center><a href="#toc"> chapter one </a></center></h3>
does not.  it wants the header tag nested inside the center tag,
not vice-versa.  since "the validator knows html better than i do",
i'm sure there is some "good" reason for this discrepancy, but
i don't know -- or care -- what it might be, because both ways
work fine in 99% of the browsers out there in the installed base.

call me a heretic, but i don't care about the technoids and their
"seal of approval" that my .html is written in their preferred style.

as long as it works, i'm done with it, and any more time invested is
a waste of my time.  as i said, i understand why project gutenberg
requires validation -- because they cannot scrutinize every .html file
that is submitted to them to ensure that "it works" -- so when i am
submitting a file i'll make sure that it validates.  but otherwise, i will
make sure my converter outputs files that do _not_ validate, since
i don't want any of my "antagonists" here using _my_program_ to
further their technoid aims which are directly contrary to my own...

-bowerbird