bdkjones
[Feature Request] Please Integrate (RESTful) W3C HTML5 Validation into CodeKit
Although the Official W3C HTML5 Validator is an open-source project, it is unfortunately, a 💩 java-based tool. This makes it impossible for anyone to bundle the validator itself into their app, unless you are willing to require your users to instal 💩 java, or bundle also a JVM with your software... I certainly wouldn't want CodeKit to do that!
The reasons why the tool was developed in 💩 java are explained in the project's "About" page, boiling down to the fact that the main programmer was more familiar with 💩 java than other languages, and trusted 💩 java's handling of unicode better than ruby's or python's.
In that page, the programmer also encourages developers that don't want to include the project's 💩 java library into their apps to use their RESTful API, submitting documents for validation via their open online service. While this is not an ideal solution for obvious reasons - i.e., requiring internet connection, slow speed when handling multiple files, risk of connection issues producing partial or unreliable results, etc. - it would still be a valuable addition to have. Knowing whether my HTML5 document passes the latest W3C tests is worth trying 2 or 3 times, if needed.
It would be incredibly valuable if CodeKit could have this validation check built-in as a preference for HTML documents - and any syntax errors could be listed just like linting errors for CSS or JS files.
Please note, that the W3C validator is "the horse's mouth" as far as determining whether a document is HTML5-compliant, and performs more reliable and thorough checks than the tidy tool mentioned in #346 - i.e., tidy is focused on autocorrecting and prettifying output while the W3C validator does no correction at all.
