Re: Producing an XML report from the validator

On 6/14/01 at 1:14 AM, link@tss.no (Terje Bless) wrote:

> On 13.06.01 at 13:58, Christian Smith <csmith@barebones.com> wrote:
> 
> >I don't particularly care what the exact format is, but the pieces of
> >info that I would need in the report would be:
> >
> >entry type         (error, warning, note)
> 
> All three would be tagged as "error" to begin with I think. We don't
> distinguish between them at the moment and I'm ambivalent about how, and
> whether to, do so in the future.

What about the CSS validator? Doesn't this return warnings? I certainly
don't want you to dilute the validator but it wouldn't hurt to make room
for this from the start.

> >start offset   (the offset of the beginning of the error)
> >end offset     (the offset of the end of the error)
> >
> >Note: These might be the same but would preferably specify a range.
> 
> We don't have a meaningfull "end offset", and I'm not quite sure what that
> would be in any case?

Well, lets take as an example the error report for this line

<body fred="jones">

The validator currently reports the offset here

<body fred="jones">
           ^
I think it would be much better if it could report a start offset here

<body fred="jones">
      ^      
and an end offset here

<body fred="jones">
                 ^

because I can do something much more useful with this data than with
what is currently reported.                 

> >In any event the value should be the character offset from the beginning
> >of the file.
> 
> Hmmm, it's possible to calculate, but it's a PITA to do. We operate on
> characters from the beginning of the line (because that's what SP does).

Hmm, given the line number and the offset from the beginning of the line
I can calculate the offset from the beginning IFF the file is open. It
would be much easier if the validator could provide this info and this
info really is important to me. I think the validator would be improved
if this were added.

-- 
Christian Smith  |  csmith@barebones.com  |  http://web.barebones.com
PGP Fingerprint  -  60E5 2216 97D2 1D1A B923 F036 00A9 CEC0 D411 FA89

Received on Wednesday, 13 June 2001 21:02:51 UTC