validating microformats (was Re: [uf-discuss] Google Gdata new syndication protocol!)

[Ben Ward]

That's excellent Mark.

I have a small additional suggestion for 'validator' feedback, that
concerning common errors in naming conventions: Such as the use of a
'middle-name' classname when 'additional-names' was intended. Also
'locality', 'region', 'postal-code', 'country-name' can be misentered
as 'city', 'county', 'zip' or 'zip-code' and 'country' respectively.

I've seen at least one instance of those sorts of errors come up in
examples on this list just last week. I think generating warnings for
those and similar occurrences would be appreciated.

Regards,
Ben

On 4/21/06, Mark Pilgrim <pilgrim at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/21/06, Mark Pilgrim <pilgrim at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Perhaps the only way to convince you that a microformats validator would
> > be useful is to build the validator I'm imagining and show you.
>
> On the road to working code, here are some notes I threw together on
> the sorts of things I would expect a microformats validator to catch.
> I concentrated on hCard since it's complex and I'm familiar with it,
> but many of the rules would apply to any microformat.
>
>
>
> Errors (the W3C's XHTML validator won't catch any of these):
>
> - Properties that are supposed to have a URI value but do not conform
> to RFC 3986
>
> <address class="vcard"><span class="photo">This is a photo if my
> dog</span></address>
>
> - URI property with data: URI value that does not conform to RFC 2397
>
> - email property value with a mailto: URI that does not conform to RFC 2368
>
> - date property with non-date value (or illegal date, or date in wrong format)
>
> <address class="vcard"><span class="bday">April 21th, 2006</abbr></address>
> <address class="vcard"><span class="bday">1993-06-31</span></address>
> <address class="vcard"><span class="rev">1993-10-15T25:01:00Z</span></address>
> <address class="vcard"><abbr class="rev" title="Fri, 21 Apr 2006
> 04:39:10 +0000">April 21th, 2006</abbr></address>
>
> - geo/latitude and geo/longitude properties with improper values
>
> <address class="vcard"><span class="geo"><span class="latitude">North
> America</span></span></address>
> <address class="vcard"><span class="geo"><span
> class="latitude">370</span></span></address>
>
> - Section 2.4.3 of RFC 2426 says phone numbers are supposed to conform
> to [CCITT E.163] and [CCITT X.121] (haven't looked into those yet)
>
> - tz property value that does not conform to section 2.4.4 of RFC 2426
>
> - agent property value that is not an hCard
>
> - required FN property missing (see section 1 of RFC 2426)
>
> - <abbr> without title attribute (see
> http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard#Human_vs._Machine_readable )
>
> - <img> without an alt attribute (only an error if it has an hCard
> class that is not a URI property, see
> http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard#Human_vs._Machine_readable )
>
> - illegal property present (NAME, PROFILE, SOURCE, PRODID, VERSION,
> see http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard#Property_Exceptions )
>
> <address class="vcard"><span class="prodid">-//ONLINE
> DIRECTORY//NONSGML Version 1//EN</span></address>
>
> - more than one sort-string property present
>
> <address class="vcard">
> <span class="fn n">
>  <span class="additional-names">Robert</span>
>  <span class="family-name sort-string">Pau</span>
>  <span class="given-name sort-string">Shou Chang</span>
> </span>
> </address>
>
> - N property present and non-empty when FN and ORG properties are also
> present and have the same value as each other (see
> http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard#Organization_Contact_Info )
>
> - N property missing and FN property is not exactly two words
> separated by whitespace (see
> http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard#Implied_.22n.22_Optimization )
>
>
>
> Warnings (may indicate publishing errors and/or cause interoperability
> problems for consumers):
>
> - no profile URI present (can only be a warning once we, you know,
> define a profile URI)
>
> - property with empty value (that does not match one of the
> error-producing rules above)
>
> <address class="vcard"><span class="honorific-suffix"></span></address>
>
> - subproperty out of its proper container
>
> <address class="vcard"><span class="given-name">Mark</span></address>
>
> - type with no value (this may be an error, I can't tell)
>
> <address class="vcard"><span class="tel"><span
> class="type">home</span>: +1.415.555.1212</span></address>
>
> - type with a value not defined in RFC 2426 (it is not clear from
> section 3.2.1 whether this is an error)
>
> <address class="vcard"><div class="label"><abbr class="type"
> title="foo">my new adr type</abbr></div></address>
>
> - geo information with latitude but not longitude (or vice-versa)
>
> <address class="vcard"><span class="geo"><span
> class="latitude">37.386013</span></span></address>
>
> --
> Cheers,
> -Mark
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