Stoat - Where?

Another update to my X-Valid plugin, though this time it’s only a small one. Upgrading is definitely optional. Version 0.96 adds the ability to add extra doctypes to the doctypes directory and have them automatically detected. The files will obviously need to be in X-Valid’s internal format, but it does provide future-proofing for including support for newer doctypes as and when they are developed. I might write one for XHTML 1.1, if anybody wants it. It also allows bloggers who are savvy enough to create customisable doctypes that allow site specifically allowed tags and attributes mixtures.

The main reason for this early release is a fix to a simple but annoying bug that a few people have encountered. Some reported messages similar to the following appearing:

Warning: initialise_tags(../wp-content/xvalid/xhtml-transitional-10.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /path/to/blog/wp-content/plugins/xvalid.php on line 250

I wasn’t able to recreate this problem myself but have been informed that the fix is a simple one, replacing a ‘require’ with a ‘require_once’. Thanks to Prem for taking the time to get in contact with me and point out the problem and the solution.

There are still a bundle of features I want to add, but finding the time is difficult. I’ll be getting on them as soon as I can, in particular attribute handling, which I think could be done more intelligently allowing for greater flexibility. Thanks to all those people who’ve mailed me with positive comments and found X-Valid useful, especially to those who have given constructive criticism and bug reports. If you have a problem, question or comment, let me know, thanks! You can go get X-Valid here.

For those who are interested, I’ve just made a newer version of X-Valid available. For those who’ve forgotten, X-Valid is a plugin for the WordPress blogging system which can automatically correct incorrectly marked-up posts and comments. It has a number of options that allow you to choose how leniently or strictly it performs, including automatic addition of required attributes and removal of invalid tags.

Version 0.95 supports the newly released WordPress 1.5 and is integrated into a single menu/plugin file. Unfortunately, it no longer supports WordPress 1.2.x (which ironically means I can’t use it on this blog until I’ve upgraded), but I’ll be working to try and backport a few of the new improvements to the older branch.

The most apparent feature is that of multiple doctype selection. Now you can choose to validate against either the XHTML Strict or Transitional 1.0 doctypes by selecting it from the menu. The menu interface itself has had a few alterations, the internal architecture of the plugin has had some spring cleaning and a couple of bugs have been fixed (Props to Jon Abad for pointing out it was entirely broken in 1.5!).

It now integrates nicely with the Plugin Manager and is One-Click installable. If you want to install it manually, you can get it here but be aware that you’ll have to change some file permissions before it will work.

As always comments, feedback and feature requests are all welcomed. Contact me here.