[WEB4LIB] Re: Ampersands in database URLs problem

[Eric Hellman]

When you say that "the URL works", you are basing that assertion on 
the fact that the limited number of browsers you have tested your web 
pages on have successfully guessed what your incorrect HTML means.
When your HTML validates to a standard, you know that any software 
that can read correct HTML will be able to correctly deal with 
yours. That will include things like re-writing proxy servers, 
semantic web indexing engines, adult content filters, WAP converters, 
automatic translation engines... shall I go on?

There is now downside to standards compliance as far as HTML is concerned!

Eric


At 7:14 AM -0700 6/9/04, Drew, Bill wrote:
>  What difference does it make as long as the URL works?  That is what is
>important.  If you change URLs to use escape characters in many links to
>canned searches or databases, those links no longer work.  I have tried it.
>This is a case of common sense overriding what a canned report from a
>validator tells you.
>
>Bill Drew
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Thomas Dowling
>To: Multiple recipients of list
>Sent: 6/9/2004 9:53 AM
>Subject: [WEB4LIB] Re: Ampersands in database URLs problem
>
>>
>The problem is that in different contexts, a different string of
>characters defines "an ampersand".  Is it "&", "&", "%26", or
>"=26"?  There are many characters that can or must be encoded
>differently in SGML/HTML/XML, in URLs, in quoted-printable mail, in
>plain text (which itself can be defined in various ways), etc.  What you
>
>really can't get around is the need to convert strings of text from one
>encoding to another as they pass through different contexts.
>
>Without knowing the possible ambiguities you're creating, you can no
>more just ignore unescaped ampersands in HTML hyperlinks than, say,
>unescaped spaces or quotation marks.
>
>
>--
>Thomas Dowling
>tdowling at ohiolink.edu


-- 

Eric Hellman, President                            Openly Informatics, Inc.
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