Error Message Feedback

Validating

[
Compare the error reports for these two urls:

	http://sverker.fridqvist.se/test/withutf8.php

	http://sverker.fridqvist.se/test/withiso8859.php

Both files contain Byte-Order Marks (BOMs) designating UTF-8  
encoding. The BOM is recognized for the first file, but not for the  
second one. Instead it is only reported that the prolog contains non- 
allowed characters. Since these characters are invisible with many  
editors and browsers, the problem is hard to understand to people  
unaware of BOMs.


Suggestion:

It would be helpful if the validator recognized the BOM also in the  
second case, and reported that the not-allowed characters in the  
prolog is a BOM.

If this is not possible, or easily done, the error message could make  
a helpful hint towards a BOM:

"Character ... not allowed in prolog.  The character may be part of a  
Unicode Byte-Order Mark (BOM). Try changing the character encoding  
setting of your editor to not include BOMs."
]

Received on Monday, 7 November 2005 13:53:55 UTC