Re: xhtml 1.0, w3c validator, nitpicks

> ampersand (otherwise the browser may try to match a "&ql" character which
> does not exist).

And a conforming XML parser is required to reject the document out right!
(It is invalid HTML, but HTML parsers are allowed to be forgiving.)

The HTML 4 specification actually has a note about this problem and
reccommends that servers that expect to receive hand coded form URLs
should treat ; as a synonym for &, so that authors don't need to
escape the parameter separator (this has to be non-normative, as the
specification doesn't specify the format of URLs).  I believe that ASP
does support ; as a separator.

I'm afraid this particular coding error has been endemic ever since people
started putting form type URLs into links.  Incidentally, you don't need
to use the form syntax to pass parameters to CGI scripts, you can also
pass information as virtual components in the path name; this can be 
better if the same URL always produces the same page, as it can allow
caching.  There really is no requirements that URLs correspond to file
names.

Received on Monday, 12 November 2001 20:13:29 UTC