Section 16.2 Proposed amendment, part two

Due to some feedback I have received, I have slightly changed my position on
this issue. Instead of telling people to look specifically for the
"javascript:" prefix, the XSLT processor could have users place the
scripting extensions/prefixes that they use in a configuration file. The
processor would then only have to check for prefixes used by each individual
client, rather than search through a long list of possible prefixes. This
would greatly reduce the performance impact of such checking.

>  -----Original Message-----
> From: 	Byington, Dale  
> Sent:	Tuesday, April 10, 2001 11:49 AM
> To:	'xsl-editors@w3.org'
> Subject:	Section 16.2 Proposed amendment
> 
> Dear Editors:
> 	I feel that something has been overlooked in the XSL Transformations
> recommendation, Section 16.2. While discussing the HTML Output Method, the
> recommendation clearly states that no encoding/escaping is to be performed
> on the content of <script> tags. I believe that this prohibition should
> also extend to <a> tags where the href attribute contains the prefix
> "javascript:". I came across a problem while using Apache Xalan 2.0.1 that
> complies to your specification. It escaped the href attribute, casuing my
> JavaScript function calls to either not run, or to produce erroneous
> output. Included below is a copy of a discussion about this topic on the
> Apache Xalan developers list group. In it, I lay out the problem I am
> experiencing in detail, as well as why I feel that any href beginning with
> "javascript:" should not be encoded. I appreciate your consideration of
> this matter, and hope that you will find merit in my reasoning. Thank You.
> 
>  <<urltest.xml>>  <<urltest.xsl>> 
> 
> Dale Byington 
> Peace Technology, Inc. 
> 13685 Baltimore Avenue 
> Laurel, MD 20707-5096 
> Phone:  (301) 206-9696 
> Fax:  (301) 206-9722 
> 
> 
>