Re: XHTML script validation error

Andras wrote:

> My suggestion is simple.

Yes, but completely wrong.

> Whenever a script is in the head on an XHTML
> 1.0 document, it should validate '<' (less than) characters:

No, it must not validate, since it is not valid. Simple as that.

By the specification of XML, "<" is only allowed at the start of a tag.

> <script type='javascript'>
> var myvar = 0;
> for (var i = 0; i < 10; i ++){

Note that the type attribute is valid but wrong (in the sense of 
violating specifications). Its value shall be an Internet media type (in 
this case, "text/javascript"), but this limitation cannot be expressed 
in the DTD, so it passes validation. Note that using a wrong type 
attribute may cause the script to be ignored - browsers may expect it to 
be in some language unknown to them.

> That's supposed to be valid, but the validator tells that the '<'
> occurred as data.

You supposed wrongly.

Note that using "&lt;" instead, though valid and correct in theory, is 
not a practical move, since in pre-XHTML HTML, rules and different, and 
IE is not understand real XHTML. The practical solution is to move the 
script to an external file and refer to it via <script 
type="text/javascript" src="foo.js"></script>

Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Wednesday, 4 June 2008 09:06:14 UTC