CSS error?

My pages give the following unexplianed error;

I/O Error: Invalid byte 2 of 4-byte UTF-8 sequence.

Does anyone have a clue what this means and or how to fix it?

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Ned Harkey wrote:

My pages give the following unexplianed error;

If you provided a URL, we could all see the problem for ourselves.

I/O Error: Invalid byte 2 of 4-byte UTF-8 sequence.

Does anyone have a clue what this means

Seems to me to mean precisely what it says. The first byte indicated
that the utf-8 sequence was going to be 4 bytes long, but the second
byte was inconsistent with that hypothesis.

and or how to fix it?

If you're aiming to send utf-8 coding, make sure it's valid utf-8:
for security reasons the rejection of invalid utf-8 sequences is
mandatory.

If you weren't aiming to send utf-8 coding, then investigate why
the software got the idea that it was. Without seeing the actual
situation, I wouldn't care to guess at the details - or rather, any
guess I might make could be wrong and liable to only mislead you
further.

"Ned Harkey" <ned213 (AT) logicsouth (DOT) com> wrote

My pages give the following unexplianed error;

I/O Error: Invalid byte 2 of 4-byte UTF-8 sequence.

Does anyone have a clue what this means and or how to fix it?

Did you try validating both your HTML and CSS?

http://validator.w3.org/
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Regards,
Peter Foti

Ned Harkey wrote:

My pages give the following unexplianed error;

I/O Error: Invalid byte 2 of 4-byte UTF-8 sequence.

Does anyone have a clue what this means and or how to fix it?

A vague memory says: Use the same character encoding for your HTML and CSS
and make sure the server is claiming the right encodings.

--
David Dorward http://dorward.me.uk/

Dear Alan,
Sorry, should have given you the examples. The web site that won't
validate is; "http://www.gijoelinks.com/". Also, check one of my other
sites which validates with no errors despite extremely similar html
code; "http://music.deadbeatclub.com/". Note that both of these sites
validated without error until just a few days ago. Not sure what is
causing the error since the validator does not give any clues..?
Sincerely,
Ned

"Alan J. Flavell" <flavell (AT) ph (DOT) gla.ac.uk> wrote

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Ned Harkey wrote:

My pages give the following unexplianed error;

If you provided a URL, we could all see the problem for ourselves.

I/O Error: Invalid byte 2 of 4-byte UTF-8 sequence.

Does anyone have a clue what this means

Seems to me to mean precisely what it says. The first byte indicated
that the utf-8 sequence was going to be 4 bytes long, but the second
byte was inconsistent with that hypothesis.

and or how to fix it?

If you're aiming to send utf-8 coding, make sure it's valid utf-8:
for security reasons the rejection of invalid utf-8 sequences is
mandatory.

If you weren't aiming to send utf-8 coding, then investigate why
the software got the idea that it was. Without seeing the actual
situation, I wouldn't care to guess at the details - or rather, any
guess I might make could be wrong and liable to only mislead you
further.

Dear David,
How do I check that? The site in question is
"http://www.gijoelinks.com/" if you want to have a look at my html
code.
Sincerely,
Ned

David Dorward <dorward (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote

Ned Harkey wrote:

My pages give the following unexplianed error;

I/O Error: Invalid byte 2 of 4-byte UTF-8 sequence.

Does anyone have a clue what this means and or how to fix it?

A vague memory says: Use the same character encoding for your HTML and CSS
and make sure the server is claiming the right encodings.

"Ned Harkey" <ned213 (AT) logicsouth (DOT) com> wrote

Dear Alan,
Sorry, should have given you the examples. The web site that won't
validate is; "http://www.gijoelinks.com/". Also, check one of my other
sites which validates with no errors despite extremely similar html
code; "http://music.deadbeatclub.com/". Note that both of these sites
validated without error until just a few days ago. Not sure what is
causing the error since the validator does not give any clues..?

Funny, I have no problem validating http://www.gijoelinks.com/, nor do I see
any errors. Did you fix it?

Regards,
Peter Foti

On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, Ned Harkey blurted out atop a fullquote:

Sorry, should have given you the examples. The web site that won't
validate is; "http://www.gijoelinks.com/".

This appears to be a very common blunder. You're trying to send out
XHTML/1.0 under the provisions of Appendix C, but you're not
conforming to its rules. An XML processor is entitled to assume (in
fact, its own rules say it must assume) that this HTML document is
coded in utf-8, because there's no HTTP header charset and there's no
<?xml charset specification (and there's no BOM).

The meta http-equiv means nothing to XML, and in any case comes too
late. It's there only for compatibility with HTML user agents.

The consequence is that the W3C CSS validator, in trying to parse the
document as utf-8, finds something which couldn't possibly be utf-8,
and bails out.

[...]

validated without error until just a few days ago.

My suspicion is that you've just added some 8-bit character, where
there weren't any before.

Not sure what is causing the error since the validator does not give
any clues..?

It's not being very helpful, is it?

The proper solution will be to put a charset specification onto the
real HTTP header. http://www.w3.org/International/O-HTTP-charset may
be of help.

It's unfortunate that the HTML validator doesn't pick it up. It seems
to be applying the rules of HTML in this regard, but the CSS validator
is handling the XHTML according to the rules of XML.

good luck

On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:35:34 +0100, "Alan J. Flavell"
<flavell (AT) ph (DOT) gla.ac.uk> wrote:

It's unfortunate that the HTML validator doesn't pick it up. It seems
to be applying the rules of HTML in this regard, but the CSS validator
is handling the XHTML according to the rules of XML.

Which would be a bug, as it's an HTML document, and it should not be
applying the rules of XHTML.

Jim.
--
comp.lang.javascript FAQ - http://jibbering.com/faq/

On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, Jim Ley wrote:

On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:35:34 +0100, "Alan J. Flavell"
flavell (AT) ph (DOT) gla.ac.uk> wrote:

It's unfortunate that the HTML validator doesn't pick it up. It seems
to be applying the rules of HTML in this regard, but the CSS validator
is handling the XHTML according to the rules of XML.

Which would be a bug,

Hmmm...

as it's an HTML document,

I'd rather characterise it as an Appendix C compatibility document.

and it should not be applying the rules of XHTML.

That's a very delicate point.

But whichever position one takes, it seemed to me that the document is
aiming to take advantage of Appendix C, and this incident has revealed
that it's not following Appendix C closely enough.

Just exactly how to break that news to the punter is evidently in
dispute, in the sense that your position, as I understand it, is that
this issue is not a failure of validation as such, and so shouldn't
be reported as a validation error, yes?