Translation: Afraid to peek in the mirror after this latest adventure for fear I have no hair left.. The GOOD news is stick-to-edness did indeed once again produce success in the form of another validated, well-formed XML (extensible markup language) document.. Yay..

Errors, my goodness the errors when I stepped off the porch of Reality and onto the much more familiar soft green grass of cyber space this morning.. Am working on putting together several XML files in hopes that I can continue to learn through them and eventually merge them into goodness only knows what, not to mention I have an eye on having information available in a format suitable for all those pesky little cellphones people are carrying these days..

That being said and without any further adieu, she presents.. The errors.....

error (1004): malformed entity reference: & -- Translation ampersand needed typed out in full & form.. A no brainer for anyone already familiar with this error from the W3C (X)HTML Validator..

error (1103): end tag uses GI for an undeclared element -- Translation Hmmm.. Not a clue.. One of that incidentally got fixed along the way.. (??) Sometimes, as does occur similarly with the (X)HTML Validator, if you pick out those error messages that make sense to you and correct those first, others thankfully, magically disappear during the same process..

error (1103): end tag uses GI for an undeclared element: ddc_members -- Translation *DUH*.. I had originally intended to use a shortened version of my element (ddc_mem) then chose to write out the word "members" instead.. Error resulted because I hadn't updated my element declarations.. Made this mistake a couple of times.. Simply changing the names of my elements eliminated a ton of errors..

In the second biggest case of where this occurred in my document, after the fact of setting up same said document, I had opted to use "voice" in place of "phone" for primary phone numbers since, within the disability community, very frequent references are made to distinguish between available telephone lines that are voice or tty (TDD).. Phew.. Got rid of a bunch of errors once those two above were figured out..

error (1150): enclosing tag undefined or lacks content model; can't check child: (CharData) -- Translation This one cleared up when I replaced an earlier discarded and thus undeclared, undefined element with one that would be used (as described directly above where multiple errors sometimes disappear when one accidentally corrects the primary offending error)..

error (1152): element violates enclosing tag's content model: ddc_tollfree (expecting: ddc_tty, ddc_email) -- Translation This one appeared to mean that I had mixed up the order of how my elements appeared.. The elements were not listed in the order as I had declared them in my document type declaration..

error (1152): element violates enclosing tag's content model: acronym -- Translation Double-dog duh........ ARGHHHH.. I can be SOOOO dense.. I'll start thinking like someone who develops XML files ONE OF THESE DAYS.. :D))

To correct this problem where I knew up front I was 99.9999% guaranteed I was doing something wrong, I just have to move the acronym element outside the ddc_org element. Up to this point, the offending element was place actually inline of another. Whoops.

If and when it comes time to have things read inline, I will develop a set of rules that tells browsers to bring up the ddc_org entry then, *if* one exists within the data available, next grab the acronym element and place it within parentheses just to the right of the full blown organization name. Like I said, "Double-dog duh.."

error (1152): element violates enclosing tag's content model: ddc_zip (expecting: ddc_voice, ddc_tollfree, ddc_fax, ddc_tty, ddc_email) -- Translation Now the reason this one occurred in this particular place was that I had wrapped element tags around addresses as I encountered them.. This one happened to be for a foreign entity that places the zip code in a different place from where we do here in the United States. My choices for this one just this second are to:

• spend more time searching online tutorial tips about how to work around this
• move the zip into the order I've declared my elements
• delete the zip element in this particular council parent element and move the zip into the ddc_country child element

Easiest for just this second will be move the zip.. Who knows, though, may change my mind before all is said and done.. :)

error (1152): *Also* appeared when I had initially used the question mark (?) toggle to mark certain child elements as set to occur only once, then changed my mind and used them twice within the parent element.. This was fixed immediately by replacing the question mark with an asterisk (*), the toggle that represents "however many times I durn well please to repeat this particular element within its parent element"..

error (1155): non-element violates element-only content model of enclosing tag: (CharData) -- Translation Turned out to mean that I had notes to myself that 1) were not wrapped in element tags and 2) were additionally not enclosed in the comment format of <!-- -->

Lastly came...

warning (690): end of DTD; unused element(s) detected: acronym -- Translation Hmmm.. That's nice of them to tell me I'm taking up unnecessary space by having a declared element I've not used anywhere in the validated document.. Problem is that I *have* used this element so apparently definitely not correctly.. See above.. :wink:

I've tried to use it enclosed completely within another element.. As suspected, apparently *not* the thing to do, at least not how I declared things, so now I have to search tips creatively until I find the right keywords for a webpage describing how to get around what I erringly tried to do.. :\

Had some weird glitches going on throughout, FireFox related somehow.. In trying to "browse" the local XML file to upload for validation, it was absolutely nowhere to be found and yet it *was* there.. I entered the path manually wholly expecting to end up seeing an error message telling me the file wasn't there, and, yet, voila, it appeared.. :?

Later on, while trying to save the latest corrections I'd made to the local file, I get an error that the file was in use by another program after I'd been saving for over an hour or more.. Thought about it a minute.. Only program using it was FireFox so closed that program and was able to then immediately save the latest changes.. Have had this occurred before although *very* infrequently.. Go figure.. One day I'll get a "real" 'puter, and errors like those will be long lost "figaments" of my imagination.. :)