Re: Does your validator support (validate) the .dwt file extension?

Quoth "Murray, David" <murrayd@neuro.wustl.edu>, on 2007-05-10 11:35:03 -0500:
> "Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because its content type
> is application/octet-stream, which is not currently supported by this
> service. 

On the Web, the "extension" of a URL has no actual force, for the most
part.  The Content-Type sent by the Web server is what has force.  The
Web server often looks at the extension to know which Content-Type to
send, which is something the validator also told you:

> Commonly, web servers will have a mapping of filename extensions (such
> as ".html") to MIME Content-Type values (such as text/html). 

Your Web server probably has no idea what "dwt" means, so it sends as
application/octet-stream (i.e., "this is a stream of bytes and I don't
know what kind of thing it represents").  That means that the
validator doesn't receive any information on what kind of thing it's
supposed to be either.  (I don't _think_ the validator actually looks
at extensions itself, only the Content-Type header, though I haven't
confirmed that.)

> That you received this message can mean that your server is not
> configured correctly, that your file does not have the correct filename
> extension, or that you are attempting to validate a file type that we do
> not support yet. In the latter case you should let us know that you need
> us to support that content type (please include all relevant details,
> including the URL to the standards document defining the content type)
> using the instructions on the Feedback Page
> <http://validator.w3.org/feedback.html> ."
> 
> Which reason is it? Is it because the validator does not currently allow
> ..dwt files to be run through it?

Well, that depends.  What _is_ a ".dwt" file?  Is there a MIME type
for it?  Is it supposed to be interpreted as HTML, or XHTML, or what?
From the file to which you pointed, it looks like it's supposed to be
some approximation of HTML 4.01 Transitional that uses hot comments to
signal things to the authoring tool, but there's no obvious way for me
to tell with certainty what you're trying to do, much less for the
validator to tell.

> David Murray
> murrayd@neuro.wustl.edu

   ---> Drake Wilson