Re: validation in Opera

On Tue, 11 Mar 2003, Håkon Wium Lie wrote:

> I come in peace.

I don't know if that's allowed:-|

>  1) lack of DOCTYPE in documents, and
>  2) lack of <meta http-equiv
> In the case of 1), the validator will refuse to process the document
> and the retuned page has no options for revalidation (which it has when
> the URL is sent). I think this problem could be improved if there was
> a way for us to tell the validator "please look for a DOCTYPE in what
> we send you, if you can't find any use HTML 4.01 transitional".

I tend to agree with you there.  Of course, it will still complain
about the missing doctype.

We can get this behaviour by adding a DOCTYPE HTML line to the
HTML catalogue file, causing OpenSP to infer <!DOCTYPE HTML SYSTEM>
when it encounters an <HTML> root element.  That won't help when the
<html> element itself is missing, but that seems to be relatively
unusual these days, except in severely broken pages.

> 2) is slightly trickier. Most pages include this information in the
> HTTP header, but Opera does not pass this information along with the
> source. Is there a way for us to do so? One that would be overridden
> by the META tag, if found?

Surely that's a matter for you as browser developer to fix?

The validator.w3.org service is geared towards interactive use from
the form supplied.  But an agent such as Opera would surely be better-
served by a webservice.  We are able to offer a validation plugin
for MSIE because Site Valet offers an XML-based validation webservice
and Jim was able to script access to it on the Client side.  Perhaps
Opera might be interested in adopting a similar approach?

-- 
Nick Kew

Received on Wednesday, 12 March 2003 20:23:22 UTC