Re: Validators that don't validate

Liam Quinn <liam@htmlhelp.com> wrote:

> >When in doubt, I refer to the W3C for the correct answer.
> >It is a matter of knowing where to look when an error occurs.  In my mind,
> >W3C is always the definitive source.
> 
> FWIW, the W3C Validator is not infallible.

That's true, and as Daniel said, some folks are trying to fix it.

> http://www.w3.org/Press/1998/DOM-REC.html.ja

I'm sure this is valid, because I wrote it and validated it ;-)

> http://www.htmlhelp.com/ja/reference/html40/

BTW, though WDG HTML Validator found no errors in the following document:

  http://www.htmlhelp.com/ja/reference/html40/new.html

but actually it's not valid.  It's syntactically correct, but its
character encoding doesn't match declared charset.  HTTP response
header says it's encoded in ISO-2022-JP, but actually it's encoded
in Shift_JIS.

The result is devastating; it makes the document totally unreadable
when one uses a browser which respects charset parameter.  Some browsers
in Japanese Windows platform can read it regardless of the charset
parameter when it's encoded in Shift_JIS, so sometimes authors don't
realize this problem.

Anyway, declaring correct character encoding scheme is critical to
make your documents accessible.

Regards,
-- 
Masayasu Ishikawa / mimasa@w3.org
W3C - World Wide Web Consortium

Received on Wednesday, 11 November 1998 10:58:53 UTC