- From: Gavin Nicol <gtn@ebt.com>
- Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 09:32:53 -0500
- To: masinter@parc.xerox.com
- Cc: glenn@stonehand.com, frystyk@w3.org, nms@nns.ru, http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
>This specification calls for the _characters_ of the form results to >be encoded in a URL. However, the URL encoding (specified in section >2.2 of RFC 1738 (URL)) is a way of encoding octets, not a way of >encoding characters. > >It is this disconnect that leaves the ambiguity that we're worried >about here: when a user fills out a form and the values in that form >are transmitted, what is the character set used in the transmission. > >As such, I think this issue must be addressed in the HTML working >group as a technical review issue for RFC 1866. As we've discussed in >numerous other venues, there is no easy solution to the problem in >general, although RFC 1867 (file-upload) gives some relief in many >instances. Given the syntax I posted earlier is still valid, it seems to be that the best thing the HTML working group could do would be to recommend that *all* form data be sent as a message body. This solves all the problems *except* the problem of URI's pointing to resources that are named in something other than ISO-8859-1 (ie. a file called "insatsu.html" on a Japanese Windows NT machine). I have seen such URL's, though I have not recorded them. Many people in Japan think that it's a rather silly thing to do, but they all also acknowledge that it will become increasingly common.
Received on Thursday, 25 January 1996 06:36:14 UTC