Re: Warn about unknown parameters

[ CC because W3C.org is acting wonky these days. ]

On 01.08.01 at 04:55, Bjoern Hoehrmann <derhoermi@gmx.net> wrote:

>>We ignore unknown parameters completely
>
>Yes, that's what I am complaining about. Unknown parameters should get
>reported to avoid confusion.

Agreed. Suggestions for how? I find only inelegant solutions -- like
keeping a list of known params -- and it seems like there /should/ be an
elegant solution to this problem. :-)


>>Waitaminute...
>
>*argl*! :-)

Sorry! I /said/ I was feeling dense... :-)


>>We end up requesting a different page and that page happens to be
>>invalid? So the extra params aren't affecting _our_ behaviour, it's the
>>_lack_ of params that makes the _validated_ server change _it's_
>>«behaviour»? IOW, it's not an error in the Validator -- the error lies
>>with the user failing to escape CGI params -- it's just that it would be
>>a usefull feature to actually give a warning about it to make the user
>>aware that s/he needs to escape these characters?
>
>We can harldy do that. Complain about invalid parameters is fair enough.

«We can hardly do...» What, exactly? Suggest escaping characters in the
URI? Why not? What /should/ we do then? There is no way we can tell the
difference between «;» and «;», if you see my dilemma? :-)


>http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3b70e0ab.6398430%40news.bjoern.hoehrmann.de

My German-fu is a little weak, but I think I got the gist of it. For the
hapless user in question: I apologize most humbly for the failure and will
endeavour mightily to correct my erring ways. Just as soon as I figure out
what they are and how to fix it. :-)

IOW, it's clear the Validator needs to be «fixed» in some sense or way. I'm
just not quite up to the point, as yet, where I grok the specifics of the
«How» and the «Why» (much less the «When»; as Gerald is AWOL the next
couple of weeks).



[ BTW, is everyone not seeing my left/right double angle quotation marks ]
[ (or whatever UNICODE calls them), but some weird chars instead?  I did ]
[ some testing with various newsreaders and found that those fancy quote ]
[ marks worked cross-platform, but by the way it looks in replies it may ]
[ be my mailer is using a different translation table from my newsreader ]

Received on Wednesday, 1 August 2001 01:05:46 UTC