about ssc

gen

Static Site Checker version 0.2.20
© 2020–2025 Dylan Harris
https://ssc.lu/,
https://github.com/devongarde/ssc,
(download latest source)

capabilities

ssc analyses static X/HTML snippets, files and sites:

HTML living standard, Jan 2005 to Aug 2025
HTML Tags / 1.0 / + / 2.0 / 3.0 / 3.2 / 4.00 / 4.01 / 5.0 / 5.1 / 5.2 / 5.3-draft
CSS 1 / 2.0 / 2.1 / 2.2-draft, 2007-2024 snapshots, HTML5 necessities, more
SVG 1.0 / 1.1 / 1.2 Tiny / 1.2 Full / 2.0 / 2.x-draft
MathML 1 / 2 / 3 / core / 4-draft
XHTML 1.0 / 1.1 / 2.0 / 5.x
WebVTT
a simple hint of JSON-LD
finds broken links
server side includes, mostly
verifies many ontologies
verifies microformats

with opinions on:

standard english (ho ho) where dialect is required
legal but inefficient HTML
abhorrent rudeness such as AUTOPLAY on <VIDEO>

It does NOT:

analyse or understand scripts
apart from XHTML, analyse or understand anything XML

It can output:

‘repaired’ HTML with resolved server side includes
JSONs of machine readable content
website statistics
deduplicated websites

usage

ssc -h
for a usage summary.

ssc -h
ssc -f config_file
analyse site using preprepared configuration

ssc -h
ssc directory
analyse website based in directory

more here

To build & run:

Follow the build instructions in build.txt.
Gleefully run ssc. It will misbehave if you are insufficiently gleeful.

in case of bugs

This is an alpha version of ssc. It is incomplete. What is complete needs refining. The developer needs coffee.

It may contain unexpected features. If you encounter one, please help improve ssc by collecting the following information (where relevant) and forwarding it to the developer:

version of ssc (for example, 0.2.20);
precise version of the operating system;
hardware architecture and system information;
detailed description of the problem;
detailed description of the steps to recreate it;
copy of output file/s and relevant logs;
copy of pages/website being analysed;
precise command used;
configuration file/s used, if any;
any ndx file or other pre–existing file used during the run;
any known workarounds, fixes or solutions;
a video of a dance interpretation of the issue (might just be optional, this).

Please email everything to mail@ssc.lu (if the collected files are more than small, kindly use a public fileserver and email the link). Do NOT send anything confidential. Furthermore, unless you state otherwise, we reserve the right to publish some or all of the information sent in future versions of ssc, probably in the test suite. If you have a fix, you are invited to submit a pull request on github, at https://github.com/devongarde/ssc. Thank you kindly.

ssc can be run in a CGI environment. This is intended for use with OpenBSD’s native httpd web server. You are reminded that ssc is not production software. Do NOT expose it to untrusted data sources, such as those found on the open web.

Notes on names

recipe: a nod to Vernor Vinge’s “A Fire Upon the Deep”;
tea: without tea, nothing works; then there’s builders’ tea;
sauce: makes the dull tasty; identifies punless pedants;
toast: toasts code; i liked burnt toast;
heater: i’m not stopping now;
unii: my preferred plural of unix: to my ears, both unixes and unices sound like they sing castrato;
andor: andor sans ancienne; land of Gift (aber nicht das Gift)

Background

I have a website, arts & ego, at https://dylanharris.org/. It has many gigabytes of original content. It contains hand coded HTMLs 2 to 5. It is a complete mess. Despite a long search, I could not find any tools to properly identify its myriad flaws. Anything I did find was at most cursory.

Then came the cow flu^*.

Hence ssc is a covid project that grew out of hand.

^* corvid means crow, thus covid means cow^**.
^** by the laws of sympathetic spelling.

Unabashed Opportunism

If you might enjoy contemporary modernist poetry or abstract & other photography, please visit books at https://dylanharris.org/. My poetry collections are published in the UK and Ireland, and I irregularly exhibit my photography in Luxembourg, to help cover its costs.

REMINDER

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Dylan Harris
mail@ssc.lu
August 2025

Dylan Harris
August 2025

build.txt	notes on building ssc
gen.txt	a model man page
usage.txt	how to use ssc
releasenotes.txt	fishless chips
LICENCE.txt	ssc licence information
LICENSE.txt	formal GPL 3 licence
more licences	licences for borrowed external content