Re: Error Message Feedback

On Sat, 2006-04-15 at 14:34 -0400, Keith Brooke wrote:
> The following fails validation:
> 
> <p>The following instructions have been adapted to our configuration
> from Microsoft's <a
> href="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307311&sd=tech">How To Set Up Internet Connection Sharing in Windows 2000.</a></p>

Yes, it should fail.

> with this diagnostic.
> 
> Warning Line 234 column 158: cannot generate system identifier for
> general entity "sd". 
> ...om/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307311&sd=tech">How To Set Up Internet Connecti
> An entity reference was found in the document, but there is no
> reference by that name defined. Often this is caused by misspelling
> the reference name, unencoded ampersands, or by leaving off the
> trailing semicolon (;). The most common cause of this error is
> unencoded ampersands in URLs as described by the WDG in "Ampersands in
> URLs". 

And that link explains why.

> Entity references start with an ampersand (&) and end with a semicolon
> (;). If you want to use a literal ampersand in your document you must
> encode it as "&amp;" (even inside URLs!). 

And that tells you how to fix it.

> The offending text is in quotes

Yes, as it contains characters other than those described at
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/intro/sgmltut.html#h-3.2.2 it needs to be
quoted, but the validator isn't complaining about lack of quotation.

>  and is part of a valid Microsoft URL. 

The URL is valid, but you need to write it in HTML, not in plain text
(as described above).

(I read the mailing list. Please direct responses there and do not CC
me.)

-- 
David Dorward                           <http://dorward.me.uk/>
"Anybody remotely interesting is mad, in some way or another."
                             -- The Greatest Show in the Galaxy

Received on Monday, 17 April 2006 16:43:18 UTC