Re: W3 Validator XHTML parse error with CGI.pm generated $query->start_html(-script)

Dear Lincoln :
	You probably saw the email from the w3-validator regarding the issue:

"The validator is correct - you are not allowed to put "--" inside an XML
comment. (Even in (SGML) HTML it would be wrong in this case.) In XHTML
the content of the script element is #PCDATA, not CDATA (since XML doesn't
have the latter), so all markup is treated normally. In particular, you do
indeed want a CDATA section so that you don't need to escape markup
characters all over the place; but you do not want to put the script
inside <!-- -->, because in XHTML's script element that really is a
comment. You may wish to consider using <script src="..." /> instead."

So, that being the case, that the XHTML's script element is really a comment, 
and if I am scripting for XHTML ( thus assuming that the browser is capable 
of parsing according to the DOCTYPE ), perhaps this code snippet would work 
OK for CGI.pm

###########################################
#    Original Coding
###########################################
#    my $cdata_start  =  "\n<!-- Hide script\n";
#    $cdata_start    .= "$comment<![CDATA[\n"  if $XHTML;
#    my $cdata_end    = $XHTML ? "\n$comment]]>" : $comment;
#    $cdata_end      .= " End script hiding -->\n";
###########################################
#insert for XHTML validation Testing
###########################################
    my $cdata_start  =  "\n<!-- Hide script\n" unless $XHTML;
    $cdata_start    .= "$comment<![CDATA[\n"  if $XHTML;
    my $cdata_end    = $XHTML ? "\n$comment]]>" : $comment;
    $cdata_end      .= " End script hiding -->\n" unless $XHTML;

This seems to work just fine and will not affect the backwards compatibility 
issue unless the programmer is specifically coding for XHTML..... I believe 
that if the XHTML DOCTYPE is specified, the the XHTML rules really should be 
in place. I really can't follow the w3 suggestion:
' You may wish to consider using <script src="..." /> instead."'
Since my perl script generates all the javascript on the fly, and creating and 
cleaning up files is a tremendous drag.

This seems to work for me anyways, perhaps you might consider incorporating 
it?


Brock Murch

On Sunday 15 June 2003 5:34 pm, Lincoln Stein wrote:
> Sadly, removing the comments will break the display on older browsers, so I
> can't do that.
>
> Lincoln
>
> On Friday 13 June 2003 01:44 pm, Brock Murch wrote:
> > Mr. Stein & Validator List:
> >
> > Background:
> > perl -MCGI -e 'print $CGI::VERSION' > 2.95
> > perl -v >This is perl, v5.8.0 built for i386-linux-thread-multi
> > server:Apache/2.0.40 (Red Hat Linux) mod_perl/1.99_05-dev Perl/v5.8.0
> > mod_auth_pgsql/0.9.12 PHP/4.2.2 mod_python/3.0.0 Python/2.2.1
> > mod_ssl/2.0.40 OpenSSL/0.9.6b DAV/2
> > cat /etc/redhat-release
> > Red Hat Linux release 8.0 (Psyche)
> >
> > When trying to validate xhtml I am having an error:
> >
> > This is the code snippet:
> >
> > print $query->header(-target=>'_blank');
> > print $query->start_html(	-title=>"$title",
> > 				-script=>"$javascript",
> > 				-onLoad=>"launch()",
> > 				-head=>[ Link({-rel=>'stylesheet',
> > 					 -type=>'text/css',
> > 			                 -href=>'/css/SSTProject.css'}),
> > 			           Link({-rel=>'stylesheet',
> > 					 -type=>'text/css',
> > 				         -href=>'/css/common.css'})]
> > 				);
> >
> > Basically the XML validator chokes on comments inside the <script> tag
> > with xhtml. If there is a open <!-- to hide the script... (placed there
> > via the CGI.pm module) and later a decrement is used (ie var this-- ) the
> > parser calls it a  "invalid comment declaration" I have saved a copy of
> > the script output as a static page here:
> >
> > http://www.imars.usf.edu/SST/animate_CGI.html
> > http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imars.usf.edu%2FSST%2F
> >an imate_CGI.html
> >
> > To make the page pass the parse test I only need to do remove the
> > <!--comments tags-->:
> >
> > eg:
> > diff animate.html animate_CGI.html
> > 9c9
> > <
> > ---
> >
> > > <!-- Hide script
> >
> > 298c298
> > < //]]>
> > ---
> >
> > > //]]> End script hiding -->
> >
> > The page is then validated
> >
> > http://www.imars.usf.edu/SST/animate.html
> > http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imars.usf.edu%2FSST%2F
> >an imate.html
> >
> > Any ideas on this? I am not a member of the list so please mail me
> > directly.

Received on Monday, 16 June 2003 14:04:55 UTC