Re: Public beta test of the W3C Markup Validator

On Friday, October 25, 2002, 10:17:32 AM, Martin wrote:


>>Further testing (thanks, Terje!) has revealed that:
>>
>>Mozilla sends the correct MIME type of image/svg+xml when uploading an
>>SVG file

MD> Just to be sure, can you confirm that the file then validated
MD> correctly?

Yes, it did. The file contained some arabic and urdu text, so treating
it as ascii would have made it not well formed (I assume the new
validator still does well-formedness checking first).

>>MS IE 6 sends an incorrect, sniffed MIME type of text/xml when
>>uploading the same file presumably because it sees the xml declaration.
>>I have not tried the exhaustive tests (removal of xml declaration,
>>inclusion of the string '<html' or ',HTML' in the first 256 bytes,
>>perhaps inside a comment) etc to try and describe the sniffing
>>algorithm correctly.

MD> The error message you got should only appear for text/xml and
MD> the text/foo+xml types, not for text/html.

Yes, but I need to test whether the presence of the string ,html
somewhere makes the sniffer think it is an html file.

>>One workaround would be to look at the filename of the uploaded file
>>and then treat this as the validator server would treat such a named
>>file if it were serving it ....

MD> I would be willing to close an eye or two for stuff sent in,
MD> and e.g. for file upload ignore the strong us-ascii default or
MD> so (which as far as I understand would mean that even with text/xml,
MD> the file would then be validated using the DTD it gives,...), but
MD> I'd rather not go into the business of sniffing on the server side.

Huh?

In what way is this 'sniffing' - rather, it is to avoid using the
dubious results of the browser sniffing.

And bythe way, the need to 'turn a blind eye' when doing file
transfers and server-less processing is merely one example why the
*brain dead stupid* rule of forcing to ascii an XML file that has a
perfectly good encoding declaration right there in the file is
*actively harmful* to interoperability, reliable processing, and the
use of languages other than English on the Web.

-- 
 Chris                            mailto:chris@w3.org