[VE][338] New Error Message Suggestion

    * Line <http://validator.w3.org/#line-38>38, column 50: cannot generate 
system identifier for general entity "thread" <div align="right"><a 
href="newReply.asp?forum=1&thread=6">Post Reply</a><br />
    An entity reference was found in the document, but there is no 
reference by that name defined. Often this is caused by misspelling the 
reference name, unencoded ampersands, or by leaving off the trailing 
semicolon (;). The most common cause of this error is unencoded ampersands 
in URLs as described by the <http://www.htmlhelp.com/>WDG in 
"<http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/problems.html#amp>Ampersands in 
URLs".
    Entity references start with an ampersand (&) and end with a semicolon 
(;). If you want to use a literal ampersand in your document you must 
encode it as "&amp;" (even inside URLs!). Be careful to end entity 
references with a semicolon or your entity reference may get interpreted in 
connection with the following text. Also keep in mind that named entity 
references are case-sensitive; &Aelig; and &aelig; are different characters.
    Note that in most documents, errors related to entity references will 
trigger up to 5 separate messages from the Validator. Usually these will 
all disappear when the original problem is fixed.

To dear W3C validation team:

I am using dynamic ASP to generate a link through <a> and the URL is valid 
one with query string:

         newReply.asp?forum=1&thread=6

however, the error message failed to address the issue that an URL could be 
constructed out of query string. How can the validator assume an encounter 
with the ampersands is invalid. Please kindly look into this problem...

Received on Monday, 24 May 2004 04:00:48 UTC