[Biojava-dev] File Validator

[Mark Fortner]

I've noticed that a lot of the email on the mailing list from users tends to
revolve around the inability to parse a file of a given file type.  In most
of the cases it turns out that the file either does not conform to the
standard, or the data in the file apparently violates XML rules of
well-formedness.

It occurred to me that we might put a page in the Cookbook that describes
basic troubleshooting techniques.  Richards past emails definitely contain a
lot of useful information and could be used as a basis for the page.

I also wondered if there were any plans in BioJava3 to include some sort of
file validator (either as an integral part of the parsing framework or as a
separate utility that could be run against any problematic file)?  In most
cases, the user simply wants to know what part of the file is broken so that
they can fix the file and carry on (or notify the data provider of the
problem and have them address the issue).

Regards,

Mark Fortner