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Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 11/30/07 09:19
Scripsit Kurda Yon:
> I try to validate one page with the http://validator.w3.org.
What's the URL of your page?
> This is
> the error-message that I got:
> NET-enabling start-tag requires SHORTTAG YES
Nasty, isn't it? Who could guess that "NET" means "Null End Tag"? And
this confusing error message has a fairly confusing explanation:
> The sequence <FOO /> can be interpreted in at least two different
> ways, depending on the DOCTYPE of the document.
Read that without the "at least" part, and read "DOCTYPE" as "media type
(HTML vs. XHTML)".
> For HMTL 4.01 Strict,
> the '/' terminates the tag <FOO (with an implied '>').
Read "For HTML 4.01 Strict" as "Formally, for HTML versions prior to
XHTML".
> However, since
> many browsers don't interpret it this way,
Read that without the word "many".
> even in the presence of an
> HMTL 4.01 Strict DOCTYPE,
Skip that as mere confusion.
> it is best to avoid it completely in pure
> HTML documents and reserve its use solely for those written in XHTML.
Well, _that_ is correct.
> However, it does not help.
I'm not surprised.
> I do not have any <FOO/> tags in my HTML
> code.
"FOO" or "foo" is common computer jargon, acting as a placeholder for
anything that might be suitable in some context. Here it stands
generically for any element name.
> This is the body-part of the code:
> <body>
> <form action="new.php">
> </form>
> </body>
No it isn't.
> The validator complains about the second line of the code.
No it doesn't. The code, when inside a suitable container, passes
validation as HTML 4.01 Transitional. It fails validation as HTML 4.01
Strict, but for a completely different reason with a completely
different error message (since there is no block element inside the form
element, it's not valid HTML 4.01 Strict, and the validator reports: end
tag for "FORM" which is not finished).
So what's the URL?
Well, looking into my crystal ball, I see that your form tag is actually
something like
<form action=foo/new.php>
and the real error is lack of quotation marks around the value, i.e. you
should have
<form action="foo/new.php">
Actually my crystal ball tells me that you also got another error
message that hints to the issue of missing quotes.
--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
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