Re: mailto: + parameters?

Foteos Macrides <MACRIDES@SCI.WFBR.EDU> wrote:
>"Daniel W. Connolly" <connolly@beach.w3.org> wrote:
>>[...]
>>There's been a lot of noise about revising RFC1738. I'm not sure what
>>exactly is going to happen along those lines.
>
>	It needs to make clear that a comma-separated list of conformant
>addresses is acceptible in mailto URLs.  The current phraseology is subject
>to the interpretation that only one address is permitted, but I don't think
>that was intended, and it certainly wasn't the existing practice when
>1738 became Standards Track.

	Oh, another thing.  Explorer uses semi-colon-separated lists
for multiple addresses in mailto URLs, which only works for other
Explorers, and Lynx.

	I've been thinking about this, and, frankly, in Lynx it took
approximately 10 minutes to have it handle ?subject=blah and both
comma- and semi-colon-separated lists in mailto URLs, and to treat
the value of any TITLE attribute as the suggested subject in any
Anchor or LINK with a mailto HREF, or FORM with a mailto ACTION.
I doubt it would take more than 10 minutes for any client, including
the market force and would-be market force clients.

	So how about this suggestion?  Convince Netscape, Microsoft
and Spyglass to "get together" and write a W3C draft for all those
mailto features, as well as spend the 10 minutes to implement them
in all three clients.  Then Lynx users could use any of them without
worrying about trashing our cheerished interoperability principle.

	I know, this sounds so snide, but the trashing of the
interoperability principle is not considered as "security" problem,
and doesn't invoke CERT advisories, and as someone we all admire
recently said:

	"To me, it is far more important to be heard, than the way I
sound. I rather have my message not aligned the way I want but
understandable, than aligned the way I want, but unreadable."

	"Oh well, maybe I am odd."
	
And another said:
	
	"Me too. But I'm afraid we are the exception."

				Fote

=========================================================================
 Foteos Macrides            Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research
 MACRIDES@SCI.WFBR.EDU         222 Maple Avenue, Shrewsbury, MA 01545
=========================================================================

Received on Wednesday, 17 April 1996 19:45:04 UTC