- From: Harold A. Driscoll <harold@driscoll.chi.il.us>
- Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 10:53:01 -0600
- To: "Clark Kimberling" <ck6@evansville.edu>
- Cc: <www-validator@w3.org>
At 10:08 14-02-00 , Clark Kimberling wrote: >and got the impression that URIs which contain Ampersands >(&'s) may have some problems. The problem with Ampersands (&) is a widespread misunderstanding of HTML... and the authors of some incomplete HTML texts (who'll remain nameless) merit more than a smidgen of the ~credit~. In all HTML documents, the character & has a special meaning, such as < (or sometimes <) to indicate the less-than (<) character. Therefore, whenever you want to represent the & character, it must be represented as & (or sometimes &). Since within a URI is where ampersands are most commonly used, this is where the issue is most evident. If you change (fix) your URIs, such as HREF="http://host.tld/cgi/electricity.pl?amp=2&watt=3&volt=4" into HREF="http://host.tld/cgi/electricity.pl?amp=2&watt=3&volt=4" You'll be all set. As an aside, note that in this contrived example, were you to change the order of the parameters (quite legitimate), the misuse of & would not only fail to validate but fail to run as expected. <g> >Unfortunately, upon clicking the link offered at the above >address in connection with Ampersands, I received a >"Page cannot be displayed" message. Oops, Perhaps a network error occurred (link or server down), perhaps a bad link. Thanks for pointing out that problem. (Said with the luxury of not being to one who needs to research and fix it, grin). >Can I validate a page that uses lots of &'s? It's a >mathematical page with lots of Greek symbols and other >&goodies, so I really must use &'s. I'd >really like, also, to be able to display the Validated logo. Oh, sure... just make sure you ~quote~ all literal & symbols as & Will it validate right on the first time, with lots of pesky &s? I'll make no predictions for your fingers, but know better that to expect same (on first try) of mine. <g> Safe computing, /Harold -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Harold A. Driscoll mailto:Harold@Driscoll.Chi.IL.US #include <std/disclaimer> http://Driscoll.Chi.IL.US
Received on Monday, 14 February 2000 12:01:07 UTC