[Wikitech-l] Parser HTML compliance testing

Well, if you're serious about this, I'd like to propose a mutually-beneficial swap: something small that will help you, in exchange for something small that will help me. What I would like is a fix for http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3693 to be checked into the tree (and in particular, to be made available on the English Wikipedia). This is a small bug/feature request that : * Already has a patch attached. * The patch is one line long. * The patch restores previously existing behaviour (albeit unintentional behaviour). * The previous behaviour was useful, and was used (by me at least). * I am not aware of any security problems introduced by restoring this behaviour. What I am offering in return is a bit of testing software that is: * Written in PHP. * About 200 lines long. * That will find invalid HTML output bugs in the Parser code. To demonstrate that I am serious and that I am not wasting your time, I have included below five small examples, all found by the test software, of wiki text that produces invalid XHTML output. The output was generated using MediaWiki 1.5.6 (which I believe is the latest version tarball you can get) *without* tidy enabled, using PHP 4.1.2, and MySQL 3.23. Also reproduced when running PHP 4.4.2, and MySQL 5.0.18. Any browser behaviour I describe was observed in Firefox 1.5.0.1. * Example 1) Wiki Text input: ===================================== <s>a {| ===================================== Current invalid XHTML output: ===================================== <p><s>a </p> <table> </table> ===================================== Suggested valid XHTML output: ===================================== <p><s>a</s></p> ===================================== Result: Invalid XHTML, and when rendered has the effect of striking all content from the page, including footers, headers, basically everything, as the <s> tag is not closed. View output: http://nickj.org/index.php?title=MediaWiki/Parser1 If you want to see a fun variant of this, with hiding almost all of the text on the page, then check this out: ===================================== <font style="visibility:hidden">a {| ===================================== This has the potential to seriously confuse less techie people running small wikis, most especially if applied to the main page. View output: http://nickj.org/index.php?title=MediaWiki/Parser1-hidden * Example 2) Wiki Text input: ===================================== a<center> c ===================================== Current invalid XHTML output: ===================================== <p>a<center> c</center> </p> ===================================== Suggested valid XHTML output: ===================================== <p>a</p> <center>c</center> <br /> ===================================== Result: Renders fine, but page is invalid XHTML. View output: http://nickj.org/index.php?title=MediaWiki/Parser2 * Example 3) Wiki Text input: ===================================== <code>b ; ===================================== Current invalid XHTML output: ===================================== <p><code>b </p> <dl><dt></code> ===================================== Suggested valid XHTML output: ===================================== <p><code>b</code></p> ===================================== Result: Renders fine, but page is invalid XHTML. View output: http://nickj.org/index.php?title=MediaWiki/Parser3 * Example 4) Wiki Text input: ===================================== ;<div>a ===================================== Current invalid XHTML output: ===================================== <dl><dt><div>a</div> </dt></dl> ===================================== Suggested valid XHTML output: ===================================== <dl> <dd> <div>a</div> </dd> </dl> ===================================== Result: Renders fine, but page is invalid XHTML. View output: http://nickj.org/index.php?title=MediaWiki/Parser4 * Example 5) Wiki Text input: ===================================== ;<div><blockquote> ===================================== Current invalid XHTML output: ===================================== <dl><dt><div><blockquote></blockquote> </dt></dl> </div> ===================================== Suggested valid XHTML output: ===================================== <!-- Nothing. --> ===================================== Result: Invalid XHTML, and results in the page appearing to be a bit stuffed up, with the page's text font several sizes smaller than usual, and the article/discussion/edit/history links being shifted upwards and leftwards. View output: http://nickj.org/index.php?title=MediaWiki/Parser5 All the best, Nick.