validator and rfc2368

Hi,

I'm not on this mailing list, but wanted to find out if the validator is
in error, or if perhaps rfc2368 does not apply to text/html 4.0,
transitional, loose.dtd.

The error in question is basically related to anchor HREF's that are
email links. In the html in question, I have ensured that it is properly
URL encoded for characters that are not intended to have special meaning
(basically everything except actual "?" and a single "&"). According to
rfc2368 (see http://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/uri/rfc2368.txt), and as
tested and which works on multiple browsers and email clients, I should
be able to specify both a default subject and default body to an email
message. The format used is as follows (pretend URL encoding has been
done where expected, I am keeping it readable for people here):
 <A
HREF="mailto:someone@nowhere.com?subject=TheSubject&body=SomeBodyText>The
Link</A>

The validator seems to think the page is ok, except for one thing:
     Error: unknown entity "body"

I have tried experiments with the URL encoding, with upper and lower
case letters, so on, and the validator always says that "body" is an
unknown entity. Is the html 4.0 transitional/loose.dtd the cause of
this, or is the validator incorrect (the browsers and email clients seem
to think it is valid). The only alternative I can think of to a falty
validator is that I'm using the wrong standards, that the rfc does not
apply.

D. Stimits, stimits@idcomm.com

Received on Wednesday, 3 July 2002 14:03:51 UTC