On Monday 04 March 2002 19:50, Tod Harter wrote: > > I don't think that's the case. I think that quite simply provision has > > been made for proper url-encoding but that 1) updating user-agents takes > > time, and 2) POST data shouldn't use url-encoding but instead use > > multipart/form-data because it make a hell of a lot more sense nowadays. > > Uh, and exactly how do you think that URL Encoding could possibly specify a > character set? Remember, it has to be useable in a GET request! IE, the URL > itself would have to specify the charset, GET doesn't have a > "Content-type:" per-se.
Precisely my point, url-encoding is utterly broken for i18n purposes. > Granted, in a POST it could, but then it wouldn't > be URL encoding!!! Which is precisely the fix: "don't use url-encoding when you can avoid it". > The whole "form" thing was a poorly thought out hack, > and the idea of URL encoding the form was a horrible idea in the first > place. Url-encoding has *nothing* to do with forms. It was devised as a way to escape characters that weren't valid URLs but might be valid names on file systems. Given that filesystems back then were mostly using 8 bit characters, from a historical perspective it all makes sense and isn't a hack. It just happens to break with the advent of modern text. > Yeah, UTF-8 is a hack. Consider this, if the world was starting with a > clean slate right now to design software and encodings from scratch, there > would be one encoding that would work for ALL text, UTF-16 (ok, unless > you're klingon or using really obscure chinese). All code would deal with > it, etc. UTF-8 exists because its a compatibility hack, period. And what's wrong with compatibility? I've often heard of it being considered a feature.... Repeating over and over that it's a hack won't make it true until you come up with arguments. As far as I'm concerned, UTF-8 rocks. -- _______________________________________________________________________ Robin Berjon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- CTO k n o w s c a p e : // venture knowledge agency www.knowscape.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Work is the curse of the drinking class. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
