Namespace-aware SVG validator

Project Manager: Daniel Dardailler <danield@w3.org>
Author of this document: same

Created: 4 August 2003. Last updated: 4 August 2003.

Table of Content:

• Introduction
• SVG Validator
• Deviation from plan

Introduction

Validation has different meanings depending on context. It can mean valid to a DTD, or to a schema. It can mean valid to the prose of some specification.

In the case of SVG, a file needs to be valid:

• to the XML definition of well formedness
• to the SVG DTD
• attributes need to be valid to the grammars in the specifications (e.g. specifying graphical path)
• the stylesheets need to be valid to the CSS specification

This project is about a modular and extensible validation framework that checks all those aspects. It can validate not only stand-alone SVG but also SVG embedded in other document types.

The deliverables of the project will be packaged as an online service for users to validate over the web, and a standalone validator for local, offline use.

SVG Validator

Motivations

A regular markup validator support for SVG is limited since it doesn't check the syntax of complex attributes: path, length, ...) and SVG profiles (basic & tiny) don't have DTDs so markup validator can't be used.

So the new tool does the following:

• the validator checks first if the document XML Well-Formed
• if it is, a DOM (a tree representing the document) is created
• traversal of the DOM and for each element:
  • content model validation
  • attribute list validation
    for each attribute:
    • "requiredness" check
    • attribute value validation
• results, 2 types of report:
  • error: serious e.g. required attribute missing, attribute value not conform to the defined syntax ...
    a document will not be valid if there's at least one error
  • warning: not as important as an error. e.g. null value for a lengtha document will be valid even if there are several warnings (but not errors)

The tool on the other hand doesn't check the validity of the scripts because the spec doesn't say that scripts must be "valid" in order for the document to be valid.

And for the time being, only validates against SVG 1.0.

How to download

You can download the zip for offline use or use the online version.

• command line tool (requires JDK 1.3.1)
• servlet online: validates by URI or by uploading a file from a computer (download the servlet)

How to use

System Requirements

In order to properly work, the SVG validator requires:

• A Java™ 1.3 (or greater) compatible virtual machine must be installed on your system.

Installing the SVG validator

To install the SVG validator, you should:

• Make sure that the java runtime is in the PATH environment variable.
• Open a console.
• Go to the directory where the binary distribution was downloaded to.
• Unpack the binary distribution with Java™'s JAR utility:
  jar xvf svg-validator-1.0.zip

Using the SVG validator

To use the SVG validator, type the following on the command line:

cd <installDir>
java -jar svgvalidator.jar [svgFiles]+
      

You can pass options to the command line:
java -jar svgvalidator.jar [-html|-xml|-txt]? <options>* [svgFiles]+

Where:

If no output format is specified, the validation report will be printed in the standard output stream.

and possible options include:

Deviation

None