[ANN] W3C Markup Validator 0.6.5 Beta #1 - "Zeldman Made Us Do It!" - Is Released!

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Greetings all; I'm proud to announce:

          The  W3C  Markup  Validator  v0.6.5  Beta #1
           ------------------------------------------
            — The "Zeldman Made Us Do It!" Release —

                 <http://validator.w3.org:8001/>

Taking our cue from from a certain web pundit's meanderings, the big news in
this version is internal support for custom and customizeable error
explanations. This means an end to digging all over the net drying to figure
out what an error message means; just turn on the "Verbose Output" option and
the explanation will be displayed inline with each error message.

If the explanation is not to your liking — «Who the heck *writes* this
stuff?!?!» — you can now submit your Nobel-nominate suggested replacement text
through a handy-dandy mailto: link right next to the error (make sure to note
the error number!). No reason to constrain yourself to Weblogs any more...


The other major feature addition is the new «Fussy Parsing» mode. This,
contrary to what one might think, is not a parse mode for fussy people; it's a
parse mode that is fussy so that you don't have to be! :-)

When the W3C Markup Validator is running in «Fussy Parsing» mode it will
complain about all sorts of things that are technically legal in HTML, but
which is known to be problematic in practice and probably not what you wanted.

(
  For the SGML Geeks among you, this mode disables pretty much all
  SHORTTAG features, complains about omitted REFC, requires documents
  to be «Fully Tagged», and a few other things.
)

This addition brings the W3C Markup Validator into parity with the similar
feature long available in the most excellent Page Valet
<http://valet.webthing.com/> by Nick Kew and WebThing Ltd. as well as the WDG
HTMl Validator <http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/> from Liam Quinn and
the Web Design Group (we validate the Validator with their Validators;
confused yet?). :-)


Relative to the previous public release — which was 0.6.1; and, yes, we _are_
aware that we started a beta test for 0.6.2 that never made it to final
release! :-) — the following new features and bugs were addressed (in no
particular order):

* Stylesheets updated to work around browser issues.
* Added a pointer to contributed RPMs courtesy of Ville Skyttä.
* Fixed broken links in Copyright statement.
* Added current version number in page headings.
* Detect proxies stripping the Referer header.
* Added "Comma Tools".
* Minor Accessibility fixes.
* A few new Webmaster Tips for the Tip of The Day.
* The Link Checker now sends Accept, and Accept-Language headers.
* The Link Checker supports more HTTP Status Codes.
* The documentation has seen much improvement.
* The RPM spec file is now available in the download.
* Update ISO-HTML DTD to TC1.
* Update SVG 1.0 DTD to current Errata.
* Added support for ISO-8859-16 Encoding.
* Added support for the data: URI scheme.
* The Link Checker in command-line mode now supports bundling of options.
* The Validator RPMs now try to integrate with the system catalog.
* Added options to make the DOCTYPE and Charset Override behave like
  Fallbacks. i.e. With these options enabled, the Override will only
  insert the relevant new value iff one was not allready present.
* No longer treat missing DOCTYPE or Charset as a fatal error.
* Much improved error messages for several error situations.
* Updated and expanded error explanations.
* Use passive (PASV) FTP by default.
* Updated experimental mod_perl support to work with Apache/mod_perl 2.
* Added support for the Big5-HKSCS encoding.
* The MathML2 DTDs were updated to the 20030620 errata version.
* Add option to restrict access to private IP addresses.
* Added custom, inline, verbose error messages.
* Tweaked markup and style for source display.
* Tweaked markup and style for indicating position of error.
* Changes in output mandated by W3C Legal.
* Verbose output is now the default from the home page.
* Added new "fussy" parse mode (enabled by default from the home page)
  that should make it easier to locate SHORTTAGS-related problems (such
  as implied end tags).
* Valid Badge useage guidelines are now available.
* Various internal restructuring to make way for future (post-0.6.5) features.
* "/referer" is now deprecated in favor of "?uri=referer"; this allows us
  to preserve additional options in referer links.

Unless serious problems are found in this release, we expect a final release
of 0.6.5 to happen in short order. IOW: Please test this beta as thoroughly as
possible!



The W3C Markup Validator Team would like to extend their gratitude the
following people who have influenced this version:

    * Björn Höhrmann
      - For not letting us get away with dubious behaviour.
    * Erik Meyer
      - For stylistic suggestions.
    * Håkon Wium Lie
      - For pushing, and showing a business case for, lenience.
    * Jeffrey Zeldman
      - For reminding us that geeks don't communicate all that well.

In addition, continued gratitude to our more regular contributors: Frédéric
Schutz, Jim Ley, Nick Kew, Sean B. Palmer, Ville Skyttä; and from W3C Team,
Dominique Hazaël-Massieux, Karl Dubost, and the tireless Olivier Thereaux.



Petition Against Software Patents in Europe:
                   <http://petition.eurolinux.org/>

- -- 
I have lobbied for the update and improvement of SGML. I've done it for years.
I consider it the jewel for which XML is a setting.  It does deserve a bit or
polishing now and then.                                        -- Len Bullard

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Received on Thursday, 28 August 2003 11:40:51 UTC