[ANN] maintenance release of the Markup Validator - 0.6.5

New Markup Validator released - now with banana flavor.

		http://validator.w3.org/

07 May 2004 - After five consecutive beta test periods, a new version 
(v0.6.5) of the Markup Validator was released today. This maintenance 
version of the popular service introduces significant improvements in 
user-friendliness, thanks to improved documentation, usability, 
accessibility, as well as new features such as community-contributed 
error explanations and user-friendly fallback mechanisms.

This version is now in use for the online W3C Markup Validation 
Service, and is also available for download.

[ see release notes for details ]


**  CREDITS  **

This new version was made possible by the volunteer work, support and 
contributions from many, including (but far from limited to) Terje 
Bless, David Dorward, Björn Hörhmann, Nick Kew, Jim Ley, Ville 
Skyttä... Thank you for your great work and help.

Also worthy of credit and praise are the many participants to the 
www-validator mailing-list, for the useful suggestions, bug reports, 
and ideas provided, as well as the great support given to users of the 
Validator. Many thanks to you all!

The W3C Markup Validator was created by Gerald Oskoboiny and is now 
maintained by a group of volunteers under the auspices of the W3C 
Quality Assurance Activity.


**  CONTACT and FEEDBACK  **

Feedback and discussion on the Markup Validator are always eagerly 
welcome. The usual channel for this feedback is the www-validator 
mailing-list. Modalities to contact the list, as well as other ways to 
contact the developers or report bugs, are detailed at:
	http://validator.w3.org/feedback.html


**  CHANGES  **

Below is a summarized, rough list of changes and improvements since the 
last stable release.

  * General
- New style (dubbed "banana skin"), new (simpler) navigation mechanisms
- Bug tracking system now officially supported
- Updating and expanding catalog of supported character encoding and 
document types

  * Features / Bug fixes
- Additional explanations for error messages in "verbose" mode - 
contributed by the www-validator community -.
- Addition of a new fallback mechanism when doctype or charset is 
missing
- Fixed broken markup output bugs
- Internationalization improvements, other small fixes

  * Documentation
  - A FAQ (NEW, added to the help page) lists a lot of the usual 
validation problems
  - The installation documentation (NEW) and general reorganization of 
the download/install/develop documentation makes it much easier to 
install the markup validator locally - and contribute to its 
development
  - Users' documentation has also been updated



Thank you.
-- 
olivier Thereaux - W3C / QA / Tools
http://www.w3.org/People/olivier/