RE: Error Message Feedback - missing title tag reported as mal-formed XML

They're might be a simple solution. Maybe it's possible then to change or
add to the "help text". Instead of only including the "malformed XML"
message, it could say something like what you mentioned below: "It's also
possible a required element was missing from the head element's content".
This would get the user of the validator thinking about what was required in
that faulty element (maybe even include a link to the w3c spec to help them
figure out the issue).

Alternatively, I'm not sure if this is feasible, but would it be possible to
detect the error, know the tag against which it occurred and then verify
that tag's content for required elements and display which are missing?

Cheers,
Mike Gradek

BTW, I love this validator service, which is why I'm attached to improving
it :)

-----Original Message-----
From: Jukka K. Korpela [mailto:jkorpela@cs.tut.fi] 
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 2:54 AM
To: Mike Gradek
Cc: www-validator@w3.org
Subject: Re: Error Message Feedback - missing title tag reported as
mal-formed XML

On Fri, 29 Sep 2006, Mike Gradek wrote:

> I believe the error message should be updated to better represent the
issue.

You're right, and the same problem has been reported by many others. 
However, it seems that there is no simple way to fix it, without rewriting 
major parts of the validator. The current internal structure of the 
validator seems to imply that when the validator encounters the </head> 
tag, it "knows" only that _something_ is missing from the element's (the 
<head> element's) content.

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Saturday, 30 September 2006 16:45:36 UTC