Weird error on W3C css validator

[Dave Rado]

Hi

The W3C css validation service at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
claims that:

{font-family: "Book Antiqua", Palatino, "Times New Roman", "Times
Roman" serif}

is invalid on the grounds that "Too many values or values are not
recognized "

Given that those fonts are very widely used and most are standard
Windows fonts, any idea why I'm getting this weird message from the
validator?

Dave

[Dave Rado]

On 12 May, 16:54, Dave Rado <[e-mail]:

Hi

The W3C css validation service athttp://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
claims that:

{font-family: "Book Antiqua", Palatino, "Times New Roman", "Times
Roman" serif}

is invalid on the grounds that "Too many values or values are not
recognized "

Given that those fonts are very widely used and most are standard
Windows fonts, any idea why I'm getting this weird message from the
validator?

Dave

It's okay I've discovered that the word Serif needed to have a capital
"S". Not a very helpful error message though!!

Dave

[Steve Pugh]

On May 12, 5:03*pm, Dave Rado <[e-mail]:

On 12 May, 16:54, Dave Rado <[e-mail]:

Hi

The W3C css validation service athttp://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
claims that:

{font-family: "Book Antiqua", Palatino, "Times New Roman", "Times
Roman" serif}

is invalid on the grounds that "Too many values or values are not
recognized "

Given that those fonts are very widely used and most are standard
Windows fonts, any idea why I'm getting this weird message from the
validator?

Dave

It's okay I've discovered that the word Serif needed to have a capital
"S". Not a very helpful error message though!!

When you changed it to a capital S did you also add the missing comma?

"Times Roman" serif should be "Times Roman", serif

By the spec you don't need a capital letter but you do need a comma.

Steve

[Sherman Pendley]

Dave Rado <da*******@dsl.pipex.comwrites:

The W3C css validation service at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
claims that:

{font-family: "Book Antiqua", Palatino, "Times New Roman", "Times
Roman" serif}

is invalid on the grounds that "Too many values or values are not
recognized "

You're missing the comma between "Times Roman" and "serif".

sherm--

--
My blog: http://shermspace.blogspot.com
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

[dorayme]

In article
<b1**********************************@t54g2000hsg. googlegroups.com>,
Dave Rado <da*******@dsl.pipex.comwrote:

Hi

The W3C css validation service at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
claims that:

{font-family: "Book Antiqua", Palatino, "Times New Roman", "Times
Roman" serif}

is invalid on the grounds that "Too many values or values are not
recognized "

Given that those fonts are very widely used and most are standard
Windows fonts, any idea why I'm getting this weird message from the
validator?

You should have a "," after "Times Roman"

--
dorayme

[John Hosking]

Dave Rado wrote:

On 12 May, 16:54, Dave Rado wrote:

>>
The W3C css validation service at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
claims that:

{font-family: "Book Antiqua", Palatino, "Times New Roman", "Times
Roman" serif}

is invalid on the grounds that "Too many values or values are not
recognized "

>
It's okay I've discovered that the word Serif needed to have a capital
"S". Not a very helpful error message though!!

The fact that the behavior changed reminds me of that old song...

"Comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, chameleon..."
-Boy George, Culture Club
--
John
At least I *think* that's what he was singing...

[dorayme]

In article <48**********@news.bluewin.ch>,
John Hosking <Jo**@DELETE.Hosking.name.INVALIDwrote:

Dave Rado wrote:

On 12 May, 16:54, Dave Rado wrote:

>
The W3C css validation service at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
claims that:

{font-family: "Book Antiqua", Palatino, "Times New Roman", "Times
Roman" serif}

is invalid on the grounds that "Too many values or values are not
recognized "

It's okay I've discovered that the word Serif needed to have a capital
"S". Not a very helpful error message though!!

The fact that the behavior changed reminds me of that old song...

"Comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, chameleon..."
-Boy George, Culture Club

The Boy George official site is under construction and has three html
errors at least. It looks so promising though.

--
dorayme

[Dave Rado]

On 12 May, 22:32, dorayme <[e-mail]:

You should have a "," after "Times Roman"

--
dorayme

Yes, sorry.

I still think the validator's error message was very unhelpful though.

Dave

[Harlan Messinger]

Dave Rado wrote:

On 12 May, 22:32, dorayme <[e-mail]:

>You should have a "," after "Times Roman"

--
dorayme

Yes, sorry.

I still think the validator's error message was very unhelpful though.

All the validator knew at the point where it reached "serif"--or even
just the "s"--was that it was expecting to see one of the following but
not seeing any of them (not sure this is an exhaustive list): a comma;
!important; a semicolon; or the end of the list. It can't tell you
"you're missing a comma" because it doesn't know from its point of view
that that's the nature of the problem. Granted, the least it could do is
show you the position of the character where it identified the presence
of a problem.

[Andreas Prilop]

On Tue, 13 May 2008, dorayme wrote:

>{font-family: "Book Antiqua", Palatino, "Times New Roman", "Times
Roman" serif}

You should have a "," after "Times Roman"

You should have a "," after "Times".

There's "Times New Roman" and there's "Times".
But "Times Roman" is not the name of a typeface family, afaik.
The Times typeface family consists of
Times Roman, Times Italic, Times Bold, Times Bold Italic.

/*
I'm still convinced that the name "Times New Roman" for
a typeface *family* is a misnomer. It ought to be Times New.
*/

--
http://groups.google.com/groups/sear...Alan.J.Flavell

[Harlan Messinger]

Harlan Messinger wrote:

Dave Rado wrote:

>On 12 May, 22:32, dorayme <[e-mail]:

>>You should have a "," after "Times Roman"

--
dorayme

Yes, sorry.

I still think the validator's error message was very unhelpful though.

All the validator knew at the point where it reached "serif"--or even
just the "s"--was that it was expecting to see one of the following but
not seeing any of them (not sure this is an exhaustive list): a comma;
!important; a semicolon; or the end of the list. It can't tell you
"you're missing a comma" because it doesn't know from its point of view
that that's the nature of the problem. Granted, the least it could do is
show you the position of the character where it identified the presence
of a problem.

On reflection I realize I was missing the fact that the validator DID
tell you something specific: that there were too many values. It DID
construe "serif" to be a value *because* it followed the preceding items
without an intervening comma, semicolon, etc. The problem is you not
knowing what they meant by "value". CSS has composite properties like
font, border, margin, etc., that can set several individual properties
at once--for example, you can use font to set several font-related
properties:

font: serif 1.2em italic;

This example has three values.

It's weird, but CSS uses commas to separate alternatives *within* a
value while it uses spaces to separate values. So in

"Book Antiqua", Palatino, "Times New Roman", "Times
Roman" serif

one value is

"Book Antiqua", Palatino, "Times New Roman", "Times
Roman"

and the other is

serif

Since font-family isn't a composite property, it takes only one value,
so the validator characterized the error as an excess of values.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Scripsit Harlan Messinger:

[discussing error reporting for
{font-family: "Book Antiqua", Palatino, "Times New Roman", "Times
Roman" serif} ]

All the validator knew at the point where it reached "serif"--or even
just the "s"--was that it was expecting to see one of the following
but not seeing any of them (not sure this is an exhaustive list): a
comma; !important; a semicolon; or the end of the list.

Actually, "end of the list" doesn't belong here - it's not a syntactic
construct as such.

It can't tell
you "you're missing a comma" because it doesn't know from its point
of view that that's the nature of the problem. Granted, the least it
could do is show you the position of the character where it
identified the presence of a problem.

It _could_ also tell that it was expecting one of ",", "!important", and
";", as you wrote. But this would probably require a major rewrite of
the program. Moreover, with some extra analysis, it could tell that
indeed a comma is apparently missing, since adding a comma is the
minimal change that makes the construct syntactically correct. Or,
perhaps simpler, since serif is a keyword with a specific meaning, it
cannot start a new declaration or a new rule, so a comma is what is
missing.

If the construct had
"Times Roman" foobar}
then such an analysis would not be possible without lookahead, since
taken locally, the problem might be a missing "}" and foobar might be a
selector, starting a new rule. With lookahead, it might be possible to
judge that this is less like than missing ",".

Advanced error reporting and recovery is possible but it means tedious
work (though this depends on the syntax of the language - CSS is
relatively easy in this respect). Moreover, the risk of issuing very
confusing messages when trying to be helpful is very real. (Been there,
done that.)

In practical terms, a person who checks a stylesheet must be assumed to
know CSS well and to figure out, from good references, where the problem
really is. Automatic checking effectively just tells that _something_ is
wrong and coarsely identifies the location of the problem. Helpful error
messages would be nice, but I can understand that there is little
motivation for working on them.

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

[dorayme]

In article
<3f**********************************@f36g2000hsa. googlegroups.com>,
Dave Rado <da*******@dsl.pipex.comwrote:

On 12 May, 22:32, dorayme <[e-mail]:

You should have a "," after "Times Roman"

--
dorayme

Yes, sorry.

I still think the validator's error message was very unhelpful though.

It's a robot, it does not know quite what is wrong and so it has a stab
and we have to read between the lines. <g>

It can take x hours to design a machine to do a job. To turn that
machine into turn-key operation would mean blowing the budget because
the turn-key bit would take an unreasonable proportion of time and
effort.

What does this last mean? It means that a team can engineer a plant that
is excellent for trained staff to use in 18 months for $US1.5 million.
But that it might take 5 years and $US6 million to turn it into a plant
that less trained staff can use. In other words it is cheaper to train
staff!

--
dorayme

[Dave Rado]

Hi Andreas

On 13 May, 15:40, Andreas Prilop <[e-mail]:

There's "Times New Roman" and there's "Times".
But "Times Roman" is not the name of a typeface family, afaik.
The Times typeface family consists of
Times Roman, Times Italic, Times Bold, Times Bold Italic.

How confusing! Thanks for letting me know.

Dave