Re: Instructions and Feedback page

"I have used the service a number of times and find it very useful, so I 
decided to place a local version on our school server to allow easier 
access by our faculty members."

Easier access is admirable, easier installation is another thing, and that is if you are
running friendly server enviornment.

If you are willing to make some compromises you could do client side validation or a
Windows enviornment server-side validation.
1) Users (Client side validation) need to be runing MSIE5+ with MSXML3.dll or MSXML4.dll (this is free)
2) Users can only validate XHTML (which is HTML 4.0+ with tighter XML syntax)
3) Validation is stepwise, the first error halts the process.

No. 1 Might be a problem if your users have Apple's, I don't know.  If your servers are
running a Windows enviornment though you could do this via CGI (i.e. server-side).  The
'real' condition is that you be able to run a SAX parser (like MSXML3.dll or SP), which is
the same as for the W3 Validator.

No. 2 Is not a problem unless you are hopelessly spoiled by bad habits.  One can be a
good artist with bad paint, or a bad artist with good paint.  Validation speaks only to the 
quality of the paint.  A webmaster must get used to saying this over and over and over ...
On the technical side, you validate against an XML style DTD (vs. SGML style)  and the lower versions of HTML are not readily available in this format.  The good news is that you can
also validate against any available XML style DTD, like 'docbook' for example.

No. 3 Might also have an instant gratification problem.  You never know how close you are 
to being done.

The one 'real' problem here for purists is that XHTML 1.0 awaits recommendation status.  I
think this should be out any day though.

The HTML + javascript driver is quite simple, and you will need a local copy of the specifications
for XHTML 1.0 or docbook etc. If you want to try this validation tactic let me know.

Gannon Dick