Re: Validator Bug

Just replying to my own message for the benefit of anyone that hits the same
issue:
> I think I might have found a bug in the w3c validator. Or at least it's
> not telling me what errors it has found in http://tinyurl.com/ovu8. It
> finds no errors in http://dtd.bwsint.com/w3.htm that uses the same DTD,
> though I do think the DTD might be causing some issue (it causes issue
> in Page Valet, but I've e-mailed the author separately). The WDG HTML
> validator (http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/) tells me that both
> pages are valid.

Well, it turns out that the w3c validator was having issue with the same
thing that caused issue with Page Valet. Some tags had more than 60
potential attributes, and ATTCNT in the HTML SGML declaration was set at 60
(which just means that no HTML tag can have more than 60 potential
attributes).

The WDG Validator didn't complain because it uses a more flexible SGML
declaration when parsing custom DTDs.

The answer isn't quite that simple, of course, because the simple test page,
using the same DTD, always passed with the w3c validator. However,
re-arranging my DTD (to reduce the number of attributes for a couple of
tags) has made the page pass both Page Valet and the W3C validator, giving
me a 100% pass rate with the three main validators, so I'm happy.

Regards,
Grant Husbands.

Received on Thursday, 2 October 2003 09:26:57 UTC