Re: An smtp URL scheme
Russell Steven Shawn O'Connor (roconnor@wronski.math.uwaterloo.ca)
Thu, 10 Jul 1997 22:55:37 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 22:55:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Russell Steven Shawn O'Connor" <roconnor@wronski.math.uwaterloo.ca>
To: www-html@w3.org
Subject: Re: An smtp URL scheme
In-Reply-To: <v03102832afeb46ea69f8@[205.149.180.135]>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.95q.970710224235.6857E-100000@wronski.math.uwaterloo.ca>
On Thu, 10 Jul 1997, Walter Ian Kaye wrote:
> At 1:54p -0400 07/10/97, Greg Marr wrote:
> >
> > The general gist of the discussion was that in order to be 100%
> > conformant, the & in the URL would have to escaped as sgml entities,
>
> Eeek, that breaks the extended mailto:
>
> <A HREF="mailto:boo@best.com?subject=Test&body=TheBody">
>
> resulted in the following in Eudora 3.1:
>
> To: boo@best.com
> Subject: Test&body
>
> because what that does is make it look like "Test&body" is the entire
> value of the "subject=" field.
Then Eudora is broken. If you wanted Test&body you would write
<A HREF="mailto:boo@best.com?subject=Test%26body"> (I think %26 is right)
> Also, I believe a URL should remain constant no matter what application
> it appears in. Only markup-language applications would even understand
> the & entity -- if I double-click the URL as shown above in Eudora
> (or launch it from *any* other non-browser application), it results in
>
> Subject: Test&body
>
> which is, of course, incorrect. And this would affect http URL schemes
> as well as mailto schemes, so it's not just an extended-mailto failing.
Enitites are allowed in attributes. This allows us to do <IMG SRC="foo"
ALT="and then he said "Let it be done" and it was so">, and
similarly <A HREF="foo.html?lang=français">. This is why & must be
escaped as & (or something equivlent).
--
Russell O'Connor | roconnor@uwaterloo.ca
<http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/%7Eroconnor/>
"And truth irreversibly destroys the meaning of its own message"
-- Anindita Dutta, "The Paradox of Truth, the Truth of Entropy"