Re: inconsistent validation results

On Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:42:42 +0530
Julian Abbs wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> i have been validating a number of pages for accessibilty testing. At
> one point i accidentally validated the same page twice (by direct file
> upload) not a serious problem except that i noticed that i got a
> different number of errors on the two reports (93 the first time then
> 102) despite the fact that i used exactly the same file, in fact
> repeatedly validating the same page continues to give a different
> number of errors though i do at least get one or the other number
> every time. I note that the source shown in "Below is the source input
> I used for this validation:" differs between the two reports. Since
> then i have re-validated all the pages which previously passed
> validation and am now finding that every page is reporting a large
> number of errors related to non-closure of meta tags. When previously
> validated the source in "Below is the source input I used for this
> validation:" shows no unclosed tags, the actual source does in fact
> have a number of unclosed tags. I'm extremely concerned at this
> inconsistency as it suggests that the validator is not validating the
> exact source as uploaded and in fact cannot be relied upon without
> making a line by line comparison of the source input used for
> validation and the actual source. At this point i'm unable to provide
> the exact source used due to client confidentiality but may be able to
> do so if necessary. I have not previously noted any serious
> inconsistencies except between different validation methods (e.g. file
> upload versus validate by URL or cut and paste) but of course i do not
> usually validate a page more than once. I'm sending this email prior
> to submitting a bug report via bugzilla please can you assist.
> 

A. The validator was improved a couple of months back, it now catches
more bad coding.

B. Probably not worth even looking at a bug report until you can reduce
the number of errors in your code, to specify where the differences are,
unles you can create test cases with minimum errors.

-- 
Michael

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall
be well

 - Julian of Norwich 1342 - 1416

Received on Tuesday, 15 April 2008 18:25:06 UTC