RE: Best Practices in HTML Re: The use of W3C standards in Denmark Part II

Hi Karl
   Checkers, validators will be developed by both commercial vendors and by
the open source community, such as the W3C tools.
   It strikes me that something that is needed is a test suite for such
checkers.  For example I ran link checkers for several years before finding
out (using the W3C link checker) that the tool was not checking for broken
links in the <LINK> element.
   So a link checker should check for link in A, IMG, FRAME, IFRAME, etc.
HTML elements, links generated in JavaScript, links in personalised/dynamic
pages (e.g. user-agent negotiation, language negotiation, etc.)
   I think it would be useful if W3C could produce a test suite containing a
range of errors, which users & developers of checking software would test
their programs against.

Brian

---------------------------------------
Brian Kelly
UK Web Focus
UKOLN
University of Bath 
BATH
BA2 7AY
Email: B.Kelly@ukoln.ac.uk
Web: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
Phone: 01225 383943
FOAF: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/b.kelly/foaf/bkelly-foaf.xrdf
For info on FOAF see http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/b.kelly/foaf/ 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-evangelist-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:public-evangelist-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Karl Dubost
> Sent: 09 March 2004 18:00
> To: public-evangelist@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Best Practices in HTML Re: The use of W3C 
> standards in Denmark Part II
> 
> 
> Le 09 mars 2004, à 12:24, Tex Texin a écrit :
> > The solution could be as simple as define a common program 
> interface 
> > that allows people to integrate checking tools and have one command 
> > that verifies a
> 
> Agreed with an integrated tool but it takes a lot of efforts 
> and a lot of resources and engineering to create. Do not 
> forget that the validator is a volunteer effort. It is 
> developed by valuable people who are not counting their time 
> and make it true.
> 
> Without volunteers:
> 
> 	Terje Bless, Björn Höhrmann, Nick Kew,  Ville Skyttä
> 
> and Olivier Thereaux (W3C), there would be no progress at all 
> on the validator.
> See the full list (http://validator.w3.org/about.html)
> 
> A common API would be valuable.
> 
> CSS Validator is a java program
> MarkUp Validator is a perl program
> Link checker is a perl program
> 
> You have other validators around too like the RDF, there's a 
> new one developped outside of W3C which is an XForms 
> Validator (still experimental).
> 	http://xformsinstitute.com/validator/
> 
> > page using an extensible list of tools, or perhaps verifies 
> an entire 
> > web site.
> > Others could then write additional checkers that share the 
> interface 
> > (eg i18n, wai, or other checkers).
> 
> EARL as a reporting language can do that for the report and 
> combine results.
> As an input usually you have a file or an URI, there's 
> nothing much you can do.
> 
> > It would also be easier to integrate checking with 
> authoring tools. (A 
> > menu item could launch a thorough check.)
> 
> Many tools already do that. They are sending files to the 
> validators or they have syntax checking (like BBEdit), or 
> they have local validation (like emacs)
> 
> > As for your question-
> > a) list all requirements- my understanding is many of the needed 
> > checks are on todo lists...
> > I think if a start was made on the list of additional checks people 
> > would like to have, plenty of input would be offered. ;-)
> 
> Until now you said: internal links, which can be easily 
> checked automatically.
> 
> With regards to the desires of a HTML checker:
> 
> * How do you check that a "blockquote" is used for making a citation?
> * What kind of ouput would you like to see of such a tool?
> * How would you test the different requirement of that section?
> 
> 	"""
> 	For example, to specify that the character
> 	encoding of the current document is "EUC-JP",
> 	a document should include the following META
> 	declaration:
> <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=EUC-JP">
> 	The META declaration must only be used when
> 	the character encoding is organized such that
> 	ASCII-valued bytes stand for ASCII characters
> 	(at least until the META element is parsed).
> 	META declarations should appear as early as 	
> possible in the HEAD 
> element.
> 	"""
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Karl Dubost - http://www.w3.org/People/karl/ W3C Conformance Manager
> *** Be Strict To Be Cool ***
>