LYNX-DEV more BASEness

[Al Gilman]

Using Lynx 2.7 -- OK, so it's antique.

G)o to www.irs.gov -- it's that time of year.

Netscape server is browser-sniffing, I guess, because I get to
start on the text-only page.  This page contains relative URLs
starting with "../" which would be illegal if the page knew
it were served as <http://www.irs.gov/>.

On the other hand, this page thinks it is
<http://www.irs.gov/plain/cover.html> and it can be retrieved by
this URL and if you had so accessed it, all the relative URLs
would work.

I perused a trace, looking for a redirect transaction, and I
could find none.

The Netscape software would seem to be assuming that ../ in
excess of enough to back up to the root of the hierarchical
domain in URL space will be ignored.

If the server sent a redirect, would Lynx take the redirected URL
as the BASE?

What should I tell the IRS is wrong?

I guess, if they fixed their start pages to use all absolute
URLs, they could then serve them under as many URL aliases as
they wish without notification.  But that's a fix, not a
rigorous statement of the defect.

-- Al Gilman