[Wikipedia-l] Re: Incorrect HTML encoding--something new?

Sun Jan 13 22:11:34 UTC 2002

A comment that MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT :-) be relevant to Lars' suggestion
(I'll leave that for you to decide):

I'd generally be opposed to any extra step, particularly anything that
requires any degree of technical know-how, that would make it more
difficult or complicated for the ordinary (non-coding) Joe to save
Wikipedia articles.

Larry

On Sun, 13 Jan 2002, Lars Aronsson wrote:

> Jimmy wrote:
> > Obviously, there's no way for us to pass all the webpages through a
> > validator (or, is there?) since end users might well write invalid or
> > at least not-perfect html.
>
> When I first thought of this, I thought it will never work because you
> allow HTML markup inside the user-edited wiki text.  Then I found out
> that this is wrong.  Think again!  Each user can run her favorite page
> through the validator and fix the HTML code in the user-edited wiki
> text until it passes.  All that the system programmers have to do is
> to make sure the system-generated HTML code passes through the
> validator.  Testing a few pages without user-edited HTML code should
> be sufficient for this.  After this, your users will help you find the
> remaining bugs.
>
> In the UseModWiki, this code adds a logotype-link to the W3C validator:
>
> sub GetMinimumFooter {
>   my $w3c = "<a href='http://validator.w3.org/check/referer'><img border=0\n"
>     . "src='/img/valid-html40.png'\n"
>     . "alt='Valid HTML 4.0!' align=top height=31 width=88></a>";
>   if ($FooterNote ne '') {
>     return T($FooterNote) . $w3c . $q->end_html;  # Allow local translations
>   }
>   return $w3c . $q->end_html;
> }
>
>
> You will want to download the valid-html40.png to your own site from
> http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-html40.png
>
> I made a quick test for the German Wikipedia through the validator
> (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline).
> The validator assumed the contents was HTML 2.0 (!), because of
> the insufficient DTD declaration at the top of the HTML code.
>
> The beginning of the page:
>
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
> <HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Wikipedia: HomePage</TITLE>
> </HEAD><BODY BGCOLOR="white">
>
> Should look something like this:
>
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"
>  "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
> <HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Wikipedia: HomePage</TITLE>
> </HEAD><BODY bgcolor="white" alink="c00000" vlink="#000080"
>  link="#0000c0" text="black">
>
>
>