[odf-discuss] ODF Validation Service! - Online

[Alex Hudson]

Daniel Carrera wrote:
>> Do you have any indication of how complete the checks are (like 50% or
>> 90% or 99% or 100% of the requirements in the ODF 1.0 specification are
>> validated) ?
>>     
>
> Let me think about this. The part of the validation that is expressed in
> the RelaxNG schema is 100% because all we need to do is run the .rng
> through a standard RelaxNG validator.

I think the Relax stuff does a pretty decent job - we don't really pick 
up many of the SHOULDs, but I don't think there is anything in the spec. 
which isn't expressed in the schema.

I should point out that while this validator does give correct results 
(as far as I know, anyway), sometimes its explanations are awful. We 
have another, less featureful, validator which gives better 
explanations, and I'm currently trying to think of a way of making this 
one work better. You can always be sure that if it finds an error, there 
is actually a problem: it just might not be quite in the area the 
validator tells you to look (for very good, long, boring and technical 
reasons - it's impossible for the validator to always point you at the 
right spot, but it could be doing a much better job of guessing right now).

In an ideal world, the validator would give you a link to the online ODF 
spec, although for developers who don't understand RelaxNG notation 
that's not always amazingly helpful.

> For example, we found that if one of the XML files doesn't end in a new-line
> character, OOo can't open the file. This is not invalid XML, it's
> actually a bug in OOo, but we added a warning for it.
>   

I actually think these inter-op warnings might be one of the most useful 
parts.

> For errors I can't think of anything we miss, but I'm sure we miss
> *something*.
>   

There are more things we can check: right now, we don't try to resolve 
links inside packages (e.g., does that image I've embedded actually 
exist in the ODF file?), and I don't think we warn on file formats 
either (e.g., you embedded a .TIFF file, many ODF implementations might 
not read that).

Cheers,

Alex.