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--><!--#set var="title" value="TODO List for The W3C Markup Validation Service"
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    <p id="skip" class="intro">
      This page has the to-do list for the <a href="./"><acronym
        title="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</acronym> Markup
        Validation Service</a>, including bugs that need fixing and general
        wish list items. See also the
      <a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator/">www-validator
        mailing list archives</a> for recent discussion that may not be
      reflected on this page, as well as open bugs and RFE's in
      <a href="http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/">Bugzilla</a>.
    </p>
    <p>
      Recently, we're trying something new. <code>:-)</code> We're going to
      start splitting development into "releases"; that is milestones with a
      version number. We've done a few already, arbitrarily named 0.5.0 and
      0.5.1, that mainly existed as CVS tags to make bug fixing easier. Right
      now I'm trying to stretch this concept a little further by planning
      features for future versions in advance.
    </p>
    <p>
      As a result, you will find several lists on this page now; one for each
      planned version and one for general "some time when I get a round tuit"
      stuff. As releases are made, the TODO items for that release are removed
      (see <a href="whatsnew.html">What's New</a> and CVS for details) or moved
      to the next release if delayed.
    </p>
    <div id="validator-0_7_0">
      <h2>Validator v0.7.0</h2>
      <div id="validator-0_7_0-core">
        <h3>Core Changes</h3>
        <ul>
          <li>Bring back the Root Namespace in results.</li>
          <li>
            Investigate how, if, and when, to use Nick Kew's most excellent
            <code>XMLMessageReporter</code> patch to OpenSP.
          </li>
          <li>Figure out <em>some</em> way to avoid inlining so much static
          <acronym title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</acronym>!</li>
          <li>Finish up the textarea for testing short
            <acronym title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</acronym> fragments.</li>
        <li>
          Add an <acronym title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</acronym>
          pretty-printer feature, using
          <a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/">tidy</a> and/or Enscript?
        </li>
        <li>Add support for https:// (<acronym
          title="Transport Layer Security">TLS</acronym>/<acronym
          title="Secure Sockets Layer">SSL</acronym>) using Ville's patches.</li>
        <li>
          Pay attention to Accept-Charset (cf. <a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator/2001JanMar/0255.html">this</a>
          message from "brewhaha").
        </li>
        <li>
          Double check that all output is valid! In particular, use style rules
          to specify height/width on suggested links.
        </li>
        <li>
          Do a great big update of the various badges; the details of size,
          transparency, naming, and how they are linked to (v.w3.org vs. w3.org).
        </li>
        <li>Make sure we output sane "text/html; charset=foo".</li>
        </ul>
      </div>
      <div id="validator-0_7_0-docs">
        <h3>Documentation Changes</h3>
        <ul>
        <li>
          Clarify the wording regarding valid characters in
          <a href="docs/errors.html#ve-139">errors.html</a> (cf.
          <a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator/2001AprJun/0049.html">this</a>
          message from <a href="mailto:clemens.radl@uni-tuebingen.de">Clemens Radl</a>.
          Thanks Clemens!)
        </li>
        <li>
          Write documentation for the <acronym
          title="Standard Generalized Markup Language">SGML</acronym> catalog,
          point out good DOCTYPEs to use, and make it easy to find if your editor
          won't insert them for you.
        </li>
        <li>
          Add system requirements for
          <abbr title="Microsoft Windows NT">NT</abbr>/<acronym
            title="Microsoft Windows 2000">W2K</acronym>.
            Bug Bjoern about his "Installing the Validator on
            <abbr title="Microsoft Windows NT">NT</abbr>" doc.
            Link to ActiveState <code>Text::Iconv</code> and friends.
        </li>
        <li>Add docs on editing
          <acronym title="Document Type Definitions">DTDs</acronym>.</li>
        <li>Document how to add new <code>DOCTYPEs</code> to the Validator.</li>
        <li>Write documentation for Content Negotiation of Badges</li>
        </ul>
      </div>
      <div id="validator-0_7_0-site">
        <h3>Website Changes</h3>
        <ul>
          <li>
            Link to Jukka's pages; both in general and to specific pages.
            Ask him about mirroring some of the stuff on validator.w3.org.
          </li>
        </ul>
      </div>
    </div>
    <div id="validator-1_0_0">
      <h2>Validator v1.0.0 (tentative)</h2>
      <div id="validator-1_0_0-core">
        <h3>Core Changes</h3>
        <ul>
        <li>
          Add a "fix my <acronym title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</acronym>
          for me" option using <a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/">Tidy</a>.
        </li>
        <li>
          Finish adding support for <acronym
            title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</acronym>
          validation (see also:
          <a href="dev/tests/">test cases</a>, or
          <a href="http://www.hcrc.ed.ac.uk/~richard/xml-check.html">an
          existing service</a>).
        </li>
        <li>
          Add a section to the report on
          <a href="http://www.mnot.net/cacheability/">document cacheability</a>?
          (or just link to it?)
        </li>
        <li>
          Put the explanations in a database (flat files are probably OK),
          and offer an option to display them inline with the errors.
        </li>
        <li>
          Incorporate <acronym title="Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</acronym>
          validation directly into this service; either
          directly or by some form of linking to the existing service on
          Jigsaw.
        </li>
        <li>
          Make e.g. <code>http://validator.w3.org/check/referer;imgonly</code>
          return only an image showing the validation status of the referring
          page.
        </li>
        <li>
          Add link validation using the
          <a href="http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/perl/modules/W3C/LinkChecker/">link
          checker code</a> (or other code with similar functionality).
        </li>
        <li>
          Add a "document meta-information" section to the report, to encourage
          people to use <code>META</code> tags appropriately?
        </li>
        <li>
          Figure out what's going on with <a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator/2001JanMar/0150.html">this</a>.
          (Thanks to <a href="mailto:marie@voyager.atc.fhda.edu">Marie
          Taylor-Harper</a> for catching this!).
        </li>
        <li>
          Investigate validation of <a
            href="http://www.openhealth.org/RDDL/"><acronym
              title="Resource Directory Description Language">RDDL</acronym></a>.
        </li>
        <li>
          Fix directories differing only in name case in
          <code>sgml-lib/pro/usr/local/lib/sgml/</code>.
          We have both "ietf" and "IETF" in there.
        </li>
        </ul>
      </div>
      <div id="validator-1_0_0-docs">
        <h3>Documentation Changes</h3>
        <ul>
        <li>
          Write documentation, describing each feature and option of the
          validator and answering questions like "What's the difference between
          an <acronym title="Standard Generalized Markup Language">SGML</acronym>
          parser and Weblint?", "Which <code>DOCTYPE</code> should I use?",
          content negotiation, ...
        </li>
        </ul>
      </div>
      <div id="validator-1_0_0-site">
        <h3>Website Changes</h3>
        <ul>
        <li>
          Update <code>sgml-lib.tar.gz</code>; automate the updates.
        </li>
        </ul>
      </div>
    </div>

    <div id="future">
      <h2>Various Unclassified Stuff</h2>
      <p>
        These items are roughly in prioritized order; i.e. the items near the
        top are those which I consider most important.
      </p>
  
      <ol>
        <li>
          Make lists of "most frequently validated invalid pages"
          and "most frequently validated (non-<acronym
            title="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</acronym>?) valid pages"
          (need to start logging stuff first, including <acronym
            title="Internet Protocol Addresses">IPs</acronym> to compare
          uniqueness).
        </li>
        <li>
          Install and play with <code>HTML::Validator</code>, link to it from somewhere:
          <a href="http://www.hut.fi/~samzait/HTML-Validator/"><code>HTML::Validator</code>
            Home Page</a>
          <a href="http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-authors/id/S/SA/SAIT/">Sami Itkonen's
          <acronym title="Comprehensive Perl Archive Network">CPAN</acronym> directory</a>
        </li>
        <li>
          Give errors/warnings related to markup that is technically valid
          <acronym title="Standard Generalized Markup Language">SGML</acronym>,
          but error prone, such as things found in
          <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.3">"B.3
          <acronym title="Standard Generalized Markup Language">SGML</acronym>
          implementation notes"</a> in the
          <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/"><acronym
            title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</acronym> 4.0 spec</a>.
          (these things really belong in something like
          <a href="http://tidy.sourceforge.net/">Tidy</a>).
        </li>
        <li>
          Make an "elements found" section a la Webtechs, with links from each
          element to the appropriate place in either the <acronym
            title="Document Type Definition">DTD</acronym> tree listing
          produced with dtd2html (after running dtd2html with all <acronym
          title="Document Type Definitions">DTDs</acronym> in the
          catalog), or the <acronym title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</acronym>
          3.2/4.0 specs, or htmlhelp.com stuff, ...
        </li>
        <li>
          Add a "recommend a <acronym title="Document Type Definition">DTD</acronym>
          for me" feature (check a document against all
          available DTDs, report which one has the fewest errors)
        </li>
        <li>
          Start caching validation results locally and doing an
          <code>If-Modified-Since</code>
          <acronym title="HyperText Transfer Protocol">HTTP</acronym>
          request to only download and revalidate
          <acronym title="Uniform Resource Locators">URLs</acronym>
          if they actually changed since their last validation
        </li>
        <li>
          Site walker/validator: need to add a "registered user" feature first,
          because this feature could be abused (many requests on a server in a
          short period of time)?
        </li>
        <li>
          <acronym title="Uniform Resource Locator">URL</acronym>-minder service:
          "remind me if this page or set of pages ever ceases to validate".
          <ul>
            <li>
              "registered user" feature is also necessary for this (to prevent
              unwanted e-mail)
            </li>
            <li>
              "registered users" could have a list of <acronym
                title="Uniform Resource Locators">URLs</acronym> they're interested in,
              and whenever they return to the service they can modify this list,
              and e-mail can be sent whenever any of them cease to validate
            </li>
            <li>
              Right now someone could probably use the existing <acronym
                title="Uniform Resource Locator">URL</acronym>-minder
              service instead of writing a new one (tell it to "mind" the
              <acronym title="Uniform Resource Locator">URL</acronym>
              that points to the validation result for a page?) But I'm not sure
              how regularly
              <acronym title="Uniform Resource Locator">URL</acronym>-minder
              checks for changes; it seemed to be
              weekly or something, which isn't frequent enough, <acronym
              title="In My Opinion">IMO</acronym>. Doing an
              <code>If-Modified-Since</code> <code>GET</code> every day doesn't
              cost much if pages don't change. Some of these features should only
              be enabled if the page consistently returns a <code>Last-Modified</code>
              header, maybe.
            </li>
          </ul>
        </li>
        <li>Provide messages in different languages?</li>
        <li>
          Add a graphical representation of the document's structure,
          using images mixed with text, or just an image?
        </li>
        <li>Add a section with
          <acronym title="Platform For Internet Content Selection">PICS</acronym>
          info?</li>
        <li>
          Issue <acronym title="Platform For Internet Content Selection">PICS</acronym>
          labels for documents that do/don't conform? Or for editing tools that don't
          conform?
        </li>
        <li>
          Investigate possibility of modifying OpenSP's messages for e.g.
          invalid attributes to include name of current element and version
          and type of markup in use.
        </li>
      </ol>
    </div>
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