Re: Best Practices in HTML Re: The use of W3C standards in Denmark Part II

Karl,

The efforts of the volunteers and the limits of those resources are
appreciated.
The alternative to the integrated modular approach is to simply put more checks
in the existing validator, and have a strategy that allows more error detection
than validating against a dtd and catching other frequent errors.
This is lower cost to implement, but has its own drawbacks.

I am not sure why you asked about blockquote. It is often used for purposes
other than citation, so I am not sure I would check for that.

However, being an i18n bigot, I don't have a problem with reporting errors that
the meta statement should be first among meta statements, and the encoding
should match the declaration (to the extent it can be verified), etc.
and the encoding should be declared...
;-)

In any event, I understand that you would like suggestions on output formats
and the like, but I am concerned that report formats, integration, and other
issues, are tangential to my request and a distraction. Fundamentally, I am
just looking for detection of other kinds of frequently occurring errors beyond
dtd validation, and I am happy with whatever can be easily detected. So if
blockquotes being used for something other than citations is hard to detect,
there are still others that can be detected and useful to report... Maybe the
approach should not be to review the standard for all possible violations, but
to identify problems that vendors have had to contend with and checking for
these real world, typical mistakes.

hth
tex


Karl Dubost wrote:
> 
> Le 09 mars 2004, ā 12:24, Tex Texin a écrit :
> > The solution could be as simple as define a common program interface
> > that
> > allows people to integrate checking tools and have one command that
> > verifies a
> 
> Agreed with an integrated tool but it takes a lot of efforts and a lot
> of resources and engineering to create. Do not forget that the
> validator is a volunteer effort. It is developed by valuable people who
> are not counting their time and make it true.
> 
> Without volunteers:
> 
>         Terje Bless, Björn Höhrmann, Nick Kew,  Ville Skyttä
> 
> and Olivier Thereaux (W3C), there would be no progress at all on the
> validator.
> See the full list (http://validator.w3.org/about.html)
> 
> A common API would be valuable.
> 
> CSS Validator is a java program
> MarkUp Validator is a perl program
> Link checker is a perl program
> 
> You have other validators around too like the RDF, there's a new one
> developped outside of W3C which is an XForms Validator (still
> experimental).
>         http://xformsinstitute.com/validator/
> 
> > page using an extensible list of tools, or perhaps verifies an entire
> > web site.
> > Others could then write additional checkers that share the interface
> > (eg i18n,
> > wai, or other checkers).
> 
> EARL as a reporting language can do that for the report and combine
> results.
> As an input usually you have a file or an URI, there's nothing much you
> can do.
> 
> > It would also be easier to integrate checking with authoring tools. (A
> > menu
> > item could launch a thorough check.)
> 
> Many tools already do that. They are sending files to the validators or
> they have syntax checking (like BBEdit), or they have local validation
> (like emacs)
> 
> > As for your question-
> > a) list all requirements- my understanding is many of the needed
> > checks are on
> > todo lists...
> > I think if a start was made on the list of additional checks people
> > would like
> > to have, plenty of input would be offered. ;-)
> 
> Until now you said: internal links, which can be easily checked
> automatically.
> 
> With regards to the desires of a HTML checker:
> 
> * How do you check that a "blockquote" is used for making a citation?
> * What kind of ouput would you like to see of such a tool?
> * How would you test the different requirement of that section?
> 
>         """
>         For example, to specify that the character
>         encoding of the current document is "EUC-JP",
>         a document should include the following META
>         declaration:
> <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=EUC-JP">
>         The META declaration must only be used when
>         the character encoding is organized such that
>         ASCII-valued bytes stand for ASCII characters
>         (at least until the META element is parsed).
>         META declarations should appear as early as     possible in the HEAD
> element.
>         """
> 
> --
> Karl Dubost - http://www.w3.org/People/karl/
> W3C Conformance Manager
> *** Be Strict To Be Cool ***
> 
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-- 
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Tex Texin   cell: +1 781 789 1898  mailto:Tex at XenCraft.com
Xen Master         XenCraft           http://www.XenCraft.com
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Received on Tuesday, 9 March 2004 13:30:12 UTC