69542 - standalone xul validator

Status: NEW

(Core :: XUL, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Alec Flett]

I am writing a little perl script that uses the XML::Parse module to examine XUL
files and look for bad patterns.
Some things I've been thinking about:
- event handlers inside templates
- unlocalized text (i.e. <text value="<text>">

I'm looking for other suggestions, so I've cc'ed a few people who might have
good ideas..

Comment 1

[Blake Ross]

Html-namespaced elements (but I don't think we have many of those anymore)?  

Needless tag complexity (<script src="..."></script> instead of <script 
src="..."/>)?

Invalid xml comment types (seems we don't complain about /* foo */, although 
that really should be the role of the xml parser)?

Just some thoughts.

Comment 2

[Blake Ross]

(Hixie point out that /* foo */ is valid in xml, but just plain 
text...nevermind about that last point)

Comment 3

[John Morrison]

Hard coded style (at least as a warning). e.g.,
    <myelement value="foo" style="border:1px solid green;"/>

Comment 4

[Peter "jag" Annema]

language="JavaScript" instead of type="text/javascript" ;-)

On top of html-namespaced elements, add unnecessary namespace declarations.

Comment 5

[Alec Flett]

all great ideas! here is a bit of sample output from what I have so far:


./content/navigator/navigator.xul Line 220, Column 14: event handler oncommand=
inside of template, in <menuitem>
            </menupopup>
          </rule>
          <rule>
            <menupopup>
              <menuitem class="menuitem-iconic bookmarkitem" uri="rdf:*"
=============^
                        value="rdf:http://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#Name"
                       
oncommand="OpenBookmarkURL(event.target,document.getElementById('BookmarksMenu').database)"
/>
            </menupopup>
           </rule>

./content/navigator/navigator.xul Line 236, Column 6: inline style in element
<box>
      <box id="innermostBox" flex="1" style="min-width: 1px;"
context="contextual"
=====^

Comment 6

[Alec Flett]

Attachment: xul-validator, first cut

Comment 7

[timeless]

Attachment: dtduse.pl

Comment 8

[timeless]

Attachment: xulval.pl

Comment 9

[timeless]

erm, these are two tools i use for other stuff. output should have grepable 
strings for deprecated, warning, error, ...

Comment 10

[HJ]

Why re-invent the wheel? Do you have a DTD for XUL? Then......

Comment 11

[timeless]

no dtd for xul is forthcoming. a validator would happen years sooner.

Comment 12

[HJ]

Ok, then I need to make one myself, based on the fourth draft of the XUL PRM. I
only can check if a XUL document is wellformed and that's not what I need.

I want to integrate a XUL DTD into my XUL Generator, so I can auto-validate
while I'm writing XUL documents (a la HomeSite).

Comment 13

[timeless]

it should be noted that someone recently mentioned that the w3 was likely to 
abandon dtd's in favor of schemas (i think the conclusion was that XML dtd's 
are useless). however this is only my understanding, i could be wrong.

Comment 14

[David Ascher]

We'll gladly add it to Komodo to do background syntax checking of XUL documents. 

One feature request -- put both beginning and end column numbers in your output, 
to make it easier to determine what bits of text to underline.

On the topic of schemas, in the absence of DTDs we have developed our 'own' 
schema-like system for XSL linting.  We could do something like that for XUL 
support as well.  DTDs or official schemas would be better, but i'm not holding 
my breath.  If you want more details, let me know.

Comment 15

[Paul Chen]

nav triage team:

Cool beans, but not a ns ship stopper, for sure. marking nsbeta1- to get off
triage radar

Comment 16

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Bugs targeted at mozilla1.0 without the mozilla1.0 keyword moved to mozilla1.0.1 
(you can query for this string to delete spam or retrieve the list of bugs I've 
moved)

Comment 17

[Jonathan Watt [:jwatt]]

Now that the release notes say that the "last of the XUL 1.0 syntax changes have
landed", would it be realistic to create an XUL 1.0 DTD?  

Comment 18

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Renaming for clarity. Also, assignee, how bitrotten are the attachments? Do you intend to continue work on a validator?

Comment 19

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The bug assignee is inactive on Bugzilla, so the assignee is being reset.