Re: What's wrong with this HTML (fails validation) ?

Scripsit Andy Dingley:

I would regard this as a flaw in the validator, in that it indicates
that simplistic pure DTD-based validation isn't adequate for an entry-
level HTML validator for use by inexperienced authors.

The very meaning of "validation" in HTML context is "simplistic pure DTD-based validation". If you want something else, give it some other name, instead of confusing things by blaming a validator for being a validator.

Of course validation is of limited usefulness and can actually cause problems instead of solving them. But that's a different issue.

The only reasonable reasons for recommending validators to Joe Wannabe Webauthor is that they detect and report _some_ errors and the other available HTML checkers confuse even more e.g. by issuing completely wrong error messages and foolish warnings that reflect just their author's taste and misconceptions.

The OP has thrown their bogus code at the validator and they've
receieved an error message that's basically useless.

The useful thing is that the validator reports the existence of an error. The rest is more difficult, but as usual, we might expect people to check back their HTML textbooks and tutorials when they encounter error messages. Checking is not a substitute for learning and understanding.

Of course it's invalid in this case, the validator told us as much. I
was writing of the broader case

Here we go. "Invalid" and "valid" are well-defined words in the HTML context. Leave it at that. You're not the guy drops here once a year to advertize a phoney "validator", are you? :-)

It seems that the validator recently changed behaviours and
started accepting <br /> as valid HTML, when it used to reject
it outright.

Nope. I don't think there's any change.

But if my fallible memory serves, this did used to be flagged as an
error?

Hardly. It would be an error to flag a valid document as erroneous.

You might confuse the W3C validator with the WDG validator
http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/
which gives (and has given for years) a useful warning, even though this is strictly speaking outside the scope of a validator:

<br />
^Warning: net-enabling start-tag; possibly missing required quotes around an attribute value

(It would be more understandable with "net" spelled as "NET" and with the addition "or attempt to use XHTML syntax".)


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

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