"Unable to Determine Parse Mode" warning given when inappropriate

When using the W3C validator on http://ereimer.net/shopping-temp.htm  
everything works well except for the following warning:

Unable to Determine Parse Mode!

The validator can process documents either as XML (for document types 
such as XHTML, SVG, etc.) or SGML (for HTML 4.01 and prior versions). 
For this document, the information available was not sufficient to 
determine the parsing mode unambiguously, because:
the MIME Media Type (text/html) can be used for XML or SGML document types
the Document Type (http://ereimer.net/HTML4+nopercart.dtd) is not in the 
validator's catalog
No XML declaration (e.g <?xml version="1.0"?>) could be found at the 
beginning of the document.

As a default, the validator is falling back to SGML mode.


Since there are many ways in which the person wanting the "XML Parse 
Mode" can so indicate, whereas the person who (needs a custom DTD and) 
wants the "SGML Parse Mode" has (as far as I can tell) no way of so 
indicating, there is a problem with the above warning message.

There is also a very simple solution:  in all cases where that warning 
is being issued, simply use SGML-mode without grumbling about it.

Received on Thursday, 27 March 2008 16:35:23 UTC