Colophon

The HTML, PHP and CSS codes used on this site were created by hand on a machine running a Debian distribution of GNU/Linux. Emacs was used to edit the files. Apache, make, m4, python and other readily available tools were used to automate the generation of some parts and test the final results. In my opinion, most of the fancy-schmancy Web authoring tools out there have at least one the following problems:

They cost money. I don't have money to throw out the windows.
They lock you into their own little system. I don't want to use a tool that doesn't play well with others or requires everything to be just so. They also require you to learn how to use them. In contrast, most of the tools I've used were already known to me: I just used them in a different context.
They violate established standards. From what I've seen by examining the meta tags on some web pages some of the authoring tools just disregard the standards.
They produce unacceptable output. I know of at least one tool that will produce a web site as a series of images instead of using normal HTML text. I suppose this is to guarantee WYSIWYG but it is not acceptable to me. Text should be text. Text as graphic is not selectable nor searchable.

As far as style goes, I try to make my pages easily scannable by using emphasis and lists so that the user can quickly find information. Keep that in mind if you think I use emphasised text too often.

I try as much as possible to follow the standards established by the W3C and other similar standard bodies. (And for those who wonder, Microsoft doesn't set standards: it wrecks them.) I also try to follow sensible design rules when creating a web site so that the site is available to a wide audience. For instance, this site uses CSS to format its contents in the way I desire but people using browsers that don't support CSS should be able to still view the pages in an acceptable (if a bit quirky) manner. This is a principle called graceful degradation and should be followed by all web site designers, in my not-so-humble opinion.

Web site testing is doable and I try to test as much as I can before publishing but I don't have the resources to test my pages with browsers I don't own. Also, some of the testing at this stage has to be manual (eg. testing the results of the CSS statements) which is certainly not as good as automatic testing. If you do find a problem, please let me know and I will try to fix it. In the process of reporting a problem, if you have specialized knowledge that would help fixing the problem, please share it.

Pages on this site have been tested to conform to these standards or principles:

This site has been tested for viewing with Firefox 1.0.3. Note that it has not been "designed for" but "tested with" this browser. The nuance here is that the site is really designed for any browser.

Known problems

Lynx does a poor job of displaying the alt attribute of images. It's hard to see at first glance that you're looking at a description of the image instead of some paragraph text. One way to get around this is to add funky text around the description (eg. "***") but I'm not going to try to fix a problem I believe is squarely lynx's problem.

I'd like to test my pages with Bobby but this won't happen until there is a freely downloadable version of that software available.

La question du français contre l'anglais

"Es-tu un traitre?"

Que nenni, votre majesté! Si j'utilise l'anglais plutôt que le français, ce n'est que pour des raisons pratiques plutôt qu'idéologiques. Quelques raisons:

Mon épouse est unilingue anglophone (sauf pour quelques bribes de français ici et là).
La plupart des gens avec qui je communique quotidiennement ne parlent pas français.
Ça fait plus de 10 ans que je participe dans des forums internationaux où la plupart des gens ne parlent pas français.

Pour rejoindre tous ces gens, je dois utiliser l'anglais. Il faut se rendre à l'évidence que l'anglais est la lingua franca du monde moderne. (Ceux qui ont un peu de culture comprendrons l'ironie de la phrase précédente. Pour les autres: allez à l'école.)

Et puis, ici, aux États-Unis (où j'habite), je me permet de lancer de temps à autre un bon juron Québecois judicieusement placé. Bien entendu, tout le monde croit que je ponctue mon anglais de profondes et intraduisibles réflexions. Ceci démontre hors de tous doutes, qu'en français, on peut leur raconter n'importe quoi à ces anglos. (C'est utile pour faire la court à une anglophone. Tu peux lui débiter ta liste d'épicerie et elle croit que c'est un poème romantique. Pas besoin d'inspiration ou de profondeur!)

"Mais pourquoi ne pas avoir un site bilingue?"

Ah, mais il est bilingue, mon site! C'est seulement que le bilinguisme n'y est pas simultané. Je m'exprime aussi bien en anglais qu'en français (c'est-à-dire, médiocrement) alors je choisis arbitrairement quelle langue je vais utiliser pour une rubrique quelconque. Je n'ai ni le temps ni le goût ni l'habilité requise pour systématiquement traduire mon site dans les deux langues.

"Mais ton site semble si profond et je ne comprends pas l'anglais."

Bien, le poisson de Babel est ton ami. La traduction n'y est pas toujours fameuse mais c'est mieux que rien. Au pire, le poisson va te donner une traduction qui non seulement sera complètement incorrecte mais sera aussi désopilante. Ce qui n'est pas peu dire, quand même, pour un poisson.

"Mais je ne suis toujours pas content! Traitre!"

Ah, vas donc ch...