Can we make parsing more tolerant?

[gkuenning]

On a regular basis, Google makes changes to the Voice pages that cause the expat parser to reject them. For example, as of today (19-Nov-2018) the parser is upset that meta tags and input tags aren't closed, and also that some fields have parameters that aren't recognized. The underlying problem seems to be that HTML is much less strict than XML.

Does anybody have thoughts about how to resolve this issue? So far my approach has always been to wait a day or two, after which either Google fixes the HTML or the DTD gets corrected. But it would be nice to be able to use a more lenient parser. I don't know how much impact that would have on the code; I haven't dug deeply.

Thoughts would be appreciated.

[jhgorse]

@gkuenning I have difficulty understanding the intended functionality of the current parser. If you could show me what the specific lines are and what they mean currently, that would be a useful reference for the thread about changing those lines of code.

Cheers,
Joe

[gkuenning]

Hi, Joe, Unfortunately I don't have much of a clue. I'm primarily a user of the system. I think that once in the past I may have fixed a minor problem by deleting a regex that matched a now-unused field, but that didn't require any real understanding of what was going on.

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@gkuenning I have difficulty understanding the intended functionality of the current parser. If you could show me what the specific lines are and what they mean currently, that would be a useful reference for the thread about changing those lines of code. Cheers, Joe -- You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: #59 (comment)

-- Geoff Kuenning geoff@cs.hmc.edu http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~geoff/ Keep trying, and keep the best.