Use local W3C validator on local site?

[Niki Kovacs]

Hi,

I'm an Austrian writer living in Montpezat (South France). I just installed
a local W3C validator on my machine (Slackware 10.1, local Apache server).
It's accessible as http://w3c-validator, because I'm on dialup and I want
to check pages offline.

Unfortunately, URL upload won't work, because the validator doesn't accept
any URL's beginning with http://localhost.

Is there any way to circumvent this limitation? I want to check the output
of a local PHP site, and I don't know how to check otherwise than by URL
upload.

Any suggestions?

Niki Kovacs
--
I'm not as think as you stoned I am.

[James Pickering]

Visit:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator/

--
James Pickering
http://jp29.org/

[James Pickering]

Sorry, the link should be:

http://validator.w3.org/feedback.html

--
James Pickering
http://jp29.org/

[Niki Kovacs]

James Pickering wrote:

http://validator.w3.org/feedback.html

What's that? RTFM? Read The Feedback Man? Anyone else has something better
to offer?

NK
--
I'm not as think as you stoned I am.

[Nick Kew]

Niki Kovacs wrote:

Any suggestions?

Either of:
(1) Just remove that check. But bear in mind that you
might be opening a security hole by exposing internal
details of your system to any user.
(2) Google for validator-lite, which is the same parser in
a desktop tool, and quite a lot simpler to set up
than a webserver-based validator.

--
Nick Kew

[David Dorward]

Niki Kovacs wrote:

Unfortunately, URL upload won't work, because the validator doesn't accept
any URL's beginning with http://localhost.

Is there any way to circumvent this limitation?

http://validator.w3.org/docs/install.html

Edit /etc/w3c/validator.conf to reflect where files are in
your installation, and configure other parameters there as
you wish. This file is well commented and modifying it should
be relatively straightforward.

And lo, on lines 50-51 (on my version from CVS a few months ago) we have:

# Whether private RFC1918 addresses are allowed.
Allow Private IPs = no
--
David Dorward <http://blog.dorward.me.uk/> <http://dorward.me.uk/>
Home is where the ~/.bashrc is

[Stan Brown]

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 17:56:40 +0200 in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Niki Kovacs favored us with...

I'm an Austrian writer living in Montpezat (South France). I just installed
a local W3C validator on my machine (Slackware 10.1, local Apache server).
It's accessible as http://w3c-validator, because I'm on dialup and I want
to check pages offline.

Unfortunately, URL upload won't work, because the validator doesn't accept
any URL's beginning with http://localhost.

Is there any way to circumvent this limitation?

Sure! Since you have a local server, all you need do is configure a
Virtual Host in Apache. For instance, here's how I set up the virtual
host oldtc3.me in httpd.conf:

<VirtualHost *>
ServerName oldtc3.me
DocumentRoot "z:/web_site"
<Directory />
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from All
Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

The document root is the directory that acts as the root directory of
the virtual host: think of it as a sort of mount point.

Then separately in my HOSTS file I configure oldtc3.me to have IP
address 127.0.0.1, which stands for the local machine. (You seem to
be on a UNIX. I don't know what corresponds to the HOSTS file, but
I'm sure there must be some file that forces a given host to be at a
given IP address and bypasses normal DNS lookup.)

Once that's done, my browser does just fine with URLs like
"http://oldtc3.me/stat/cltlab.htm". Since it's http, I'm sure your
local validator would also do fine.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Why We Won't Help You:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/200..._wont_help_you

[Niki Kovacs]

Nick Kew wrote:

Either of:
(1)*Just*remove*that*check.**But*bear*in*mind*that *you
might*be*opening*a*security*hole*by*exposing*inter nal
details*of*your*system*to*any*user.

I run Slack Linux 10.1 with a hand-crafted iptables/netfilter firewall, so
my first thought about this is: let 'em come:oD

Cheers,

Niki Kovacs (same initials, hey)
--
I'm not as think as you stoned I am.

[Niki Kovacs]

David Dorward wrote:

Edit*/etc/w3c/validator.conf*to*reflect*where*files*are*in
your*installation,*and*configure*other*parameters* there*as
you*wish.*This*file*is*well*commented*and*modifyin g*it*should
be*relatively*straightforward.

And lo, on lines 50-51 (on my version from CVS a few months ago) we have:

# Whether private RFC1918 addresses are allowed.
Allow Private IPs = no

Thanks! That solved the problem.

Niki Kovacs
--
I'm not as think as you stoned I am.

[Stan Brown]

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 20:32:07 +0100 in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Nick Kew favored us with...

(2) Google for validator-lite, which is the same parser in
a desktop tool, and quite a lot simpler to set up
than a webserver-based validator.

Does validator-lite find different problems from NSGMLS, or is it
just a different user interface for the same validation engine?

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Why We Won't Help You:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/200..._wont_help_you

[Nick Kew]

Stan Brown wrote:

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 20:32:07 +0100 in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Nick Kew favored us with...

(2) Google for validator-lite, which is the same parser in
a desktop tool, and quite a lot simpler to set up
than a webserver-based validator.

Does validator-lite find different problems from NSGMLS,

No. At least not if you update to onsgmls, since the old nsgmls
has been unmaintained for many years. It does offer the option
to find more errors than the W3C validator, as documented under
"parse mode"s. That is exactly equivalent to onsgmls commandline
options.
or is it
just a different user interface for the same validation engine?

It is, as I said, the same parser - OpenSP. Also featured in the other
online HTML validation services, and in Liam's windows desktop
"arealvalidator". Whereas onsgmls is a commandline wrapper on OpenSP,
Validator-lite is a GUI wrapper.

--
Nick Kew

[Stan Brown]

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 10:16:28 +0100 in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Nick Kew favored us with...

Stan Brown wrote:

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 20:32:07 +0100 in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Nick Kew favored us with...

(2) Google for validator-lite, which is the same parser in
a desktop tool, and quite a lot simpler to set up
than a webserver-based validator.

Does validator-lite find different problems from NSGMLS,

No. At least not if you update to onsgmls, since the old nsgmls
has been unmaintained for many years. It does offer the option
to find more errors than the W3C validator, as documented under
"parse mode"s. That is exactly equivalent to onsgmls commandline
options.

Thanks, Nick. That raises a follow-up question: will ONSGMLS find
anything in an HTML4.01 document that NSGMLS missed> In other
words, is it actually worth upgrading, changing my batch files,
etc?

I'm still struggling along with Windows, so compiling from source
is rather a pain for me, over and above the usual glitches to be
expected with any new software. I'd just as soon not do it unless
there's some specific advantage.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Why We Won't Help You:

http://diveintomark.org/archives/200..._wont_help_you

[Nick Kew]

Stan Brown wrote:

Does validator-lite find different problems from NSGMLS,

No. At least not if you update to onsgmls, since the old nsgmls
has been unmaintained for many years. It does offer the option
to find more errors than the W3C validator, as documented under
"parse mode"s. That is exactly equivalent to onsgmls commandline
options.

Thanks, Nick. That raises a follow-up question: will ONSGMLS find
anything in an HTML4.01 document that NSGMLS missed> In other
words, is it actually worth upgrading, changing my batch files,
etc?

Not sure about that (I'm not quite sure where nsgmls was at when
James Clark handed it over to the team @sourceforge and it
became onsgmls).
I'm still struggling along with Windows, so compiling from source
is rather a pain for me, over and above the usual glitches to be
expected with any new software. I'd just as soon not do it unless
there's some specific advantage.

There are binaries around. Liam's arealvalidator includes it (I think),
and Björn Höhrmann has compiled uptodate windows versions, which I think
he makes available.

--
Nick Kew

[Stan Brown]

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 22:40:33 +0100 in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, Nick Kew favored us with...

There are binaries around. Liam's arealvalidator includes it (I think),
and Björn Höhrmann has compiled uptodate windows versions, which I think
he makes available.

Thanks again, Nick! With that hint, I googled for
"Björn Höhrmann" onsgmls
and in the first page of hits I found a page that led me to
http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de/ports/Ope...-win32-bin.zip

IN case someone else googles for he informaton, these are Windows
binaries of ONSGMLS. The zip file contains no documentation, but I
found a man page at
http://linuxcommand.org/man_pages/onsgmls1.html

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Why We Won't Help You:

http://diveintomark.org/archives/200..._wont_help_you