Validator output and standards conformance

Maybe this  has  been noted before, but being new to this list...

Just for fun, I asked the HTML-validator to validate the document
returned by the HTML validator (sort of applying it to itself).

I got some error messages, and at least some of them can be regarded as
caused by the designers/implementors of the validation service.

For example, I get this  remark:
---<begin quote>---
Below are the results of attempting to parse this document with
    an SGML parser.

Line 107, column 10:
  <ul>    <p><strong>Fatal Error</strong>:  no document type declaration
...
            ^
Error:  start tag for "LI" omitted
---<end quote>---

This is from an ordinary user's point of view a mere curiosity, but from
the point of view of whether W3C lives up to its own standards, it can
be regarded as an embarrasing deficiency.

Whether these problems will be repaired can be of interest, as I am
presently dissecting the page by software to extract some information
from it. If the HTML structure of the validators output is  changed,
then I have to change my software. No big deal, as  long as I know
if/when it is going to happen.

/olle

--
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Olle Olsson   olleo@sics.se   Tel: +46 8 633 15 19  Fax: +46 8 751 72 30

 [Svenska W3C-kontoret: olleo@w3.org]
SICS [Swedish Institute of Computer Science]
Box 1263
SE - 164 29 Kista
Sweden
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Received on Thursday, 4 April 2002 08:14:08 UTC