lynx-dev Re: msg00798.html (was: 0x2276 handling)

[Leonid Pauzner]

>         The URL is: http://unicorn.us.com/testlynx.html
Thanks.

> <p>
> <a href="http://cgi.unicorn.us.com/cgi-bin/unicorn/test-cgi?getpd=512&lg=1";>
> http://cgi.unicorn.us.com/cgi-bin/unicorn/test-cgi?getpd=512&lg=1</a>
> </p>
>
>         The "&lg=" in the query will be treated as "&lg;=" because the '='
> is an implied terminator for the "&lg".  Alex has another paragraph in
> that page where he changed the "&lg=" to "&lgin=". That works fine,
> entirely, because "lgin" is not defined anywhere in Lynx as a named
> character reference, and so the standard error recovery occurs, entirely.

Following recovery issues proposed:

(1) translate entities only from correct syntax which ends up with ";",
                overwise return verbatim  (but the BIG TWO?)
(2) do (1) only in HREF= (but we got two strings you quoted above
                displayed differently)
(3) do not translate &xyz= which ends up with "=" (no ";" before "=")

The last variant looks more preferable.

HTML 4.0 draft in "Representing non-ASCII characters in URLs"
besides hex escaping UTF-8 multibytes say in particular:

   Note. The URL that is constructed when a form is submitted may be used
   as an anchor-style link (e.g., the href attribute for the A element).
   Unfortunately, the use of the "&" character to separate form fields
   interacts with its use in SGML attribute values to delimit character
   entity references. For example, to use the URL "http://host/?x=1&y=2";
   as a linking URL, it must be written <A
   href="http://host/?x=1&#38;y=2";> or <A
   href="http://host/?x=1&amp;y=2";>. HTTP server implementors, and in
   particular, CGI implementors are encouraged to support the use of ";"
   in place of "&" to save authors the trouble of escaping "&" characters
   in this manner.

URN syntax (RFC2141) restrict several characters including "&".
>From the other hand, HTML 4.0 interpret href= attribute as %URL
which seems to be CDATA and may include NCRs/named references
and have mach more freedom...