Bug#172132: pkgreport.cgi doesn't cope with & where & is expected
On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 09:17:00PM +0000, Darren Salt wrote:
> In message <[🔎] 20021207195649.GA23380@cibalia.gkvk.hr> you wrote:
> > Funny you should say that, in light of...
> > X-Message-Flag: Outlook Express is broken. Upgrade to mail(1).
> > IMHO this is not a bug, it's a request for supporting broken browsers.
>
> Any browser which displays
> <a href="index.html>Home page</a>
> as a link, containing the text "Home page", to index.html is supporting
> broken HTML; should it simply fail to display it?
HTML parsers often need to be lenient in lots of ways, due to the
various semi-broken or completely broken things that people dump into
web pages. That's more or less OK; it's true that it fails to encourage
people to fix their pages, but in itself it doesn't cause a portability
problem.
However, there's no excuse for being "lenient" in ways that cause them
to send broken requests when users follow links, IMHO. Leniency doesn't
extend to being wrong. :) Their parsing here renders it impossible for
authors to produce correct and portable pages with links containing the
'&' character, and that's a very serious bug (I don't mean serious in
the Debian sense here).
Regarding this whole discussion, see:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/1999OctDec/0162.html
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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