There is a golden opportunity here for someone to create an automated tool to assess the use/misuse of HTML which PG could use to screen submissions--see my earlier post with some simple tests written in Perl. I would be happy to host development of the tool under the Guiguts sourceforge project. Also badly needed is an update of gutcheck the corresponding tool to evalute .txt submissions--it has not been changed since 2005 and cannot even count the number of characters per line if the line contains Unicode. Provide me with your sourceforge ID and I will give your access rights. If it were up to me I would write these tools in Perl not C (since Guiguts is in Perl), or it could be an enhancement to HTML Tidy but my only request is that the errors/warnings generated look like "linenum:columnnum This line is wrong: <h1>Chapter</h2>" (this allows Guiguts users to double click on an error report to jump to the errors). Guiguts has a "Check All" button which runs W3C validation, W! 3C CSS check, Link Check, HTML Tidy, Image Check, and the rudimentary Epub Friendly check I sent earlier--perhaps these could be part of an HTMLGutcheck tool. I could bundle the tools with Guiguts so they would reach a broad audience even if PG does not immediately adopt them. Hunter
Why aren't WWers send back projects that include destructive layout tagging, or don't include important structural tagging? I can think of any number of reasons for rejection that are less disruptive to the reader's satisfaction.
Because we have automated checks for validity and good spelling. We don't have automated checks for (mis-) use of HTML for layout. If we had some sort of automated and relatively unambiguous checks for such things, I'm sure that many submitters would strive to comply. -- Greg