Bug#172132: pkgreport.cgi doesn't cope with & where & is expected
I demand that Josip Rodin may or may not have written...
> On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 09:17:00PM +0000, Darren Salt wrote:
>>>> Arguably, pkgreport.cgi etc. not coping with & where & is expected
>>>> is correct behaviour, but there are one or two browsers which don't
>>>> decode character entities in URLs (in the case of at least one such
>>>> browser, it was a design decision based on & in URLs often being a
>>>> literal & rather than marking the start of a character entity).
>>>> Better to be liberal in what you accept :-)
>>> 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?
> Uhh, I don't see how that is relevant to what we have here. It's not broken
> to use & to represent the ampersand character in anchor tags; on the
> contrary, it is exactly according to the specification.
Wrong end of the stick...? :-)
The browser rendering the above broken HTML is handling errors. The CGI
script which understands & is also handling errors. Both are cases of
being liberal with what you accept; the browser not interpreting & in a
URL is a case of not being strict in what you send.
[snip]
> It's unfortunate that there are browsers that do things otherwise. But that
> still doesn't mean our spec-abiding (law-abiding, peace-loving :) software
> has a _bug_ if it doesn't handle such quirks. That would be a nice bonus,
> but it comes second to handling the normal stuff.
I'm not arguing... <clicky> <clicky> severity 172132 grave ;-)
--
| Darren Salt | d youmustbejoking,demon,co,uk | nr. Ashington,
| RPC, Spec+3, A3010 | s zap,tartarus,org | Northumberland
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