On Sat, 15 Sep 2007, Richard Porter wrote:
It appears that NetSurf truncates a link to 255 characters. I've just
received an invoice notification that contains two PayPal links which
well exceed 511 characters.
I'm sure that links on web pages can be longer, but why is this
limitation imposed on entered URLs including those generated by a mail
client? Is it just arbitrary or is it an RFC?
NetSurf has no hard-coded limits on URL length. There is a known issue
with URL completion and long URLs but this is unlikely to have any effect
in this case. You haven't said how you're entering URLs, so I've no idea
quite what the problem might be.
If you're launching the URL from another application, it could well be
the result of some limit related to Wimp message processing. The maximum
size of a poll block is 256 bytes, of which 20 bytes are reserved for
various global fields; thus the maximum length of a string in a Wimp
message is 256 - 20 = 236 bytes (or 235, if a terminator is required).
This limit will certainly affect the ANT URL protocol (as, to my
knowledge, nothing sends the indirect form of the message). I can't
recall off-hand if the Acorn URI protocol bypasses the limit. Most apps
try the ANT protocol first, however, so it's somewhat of a moot point.
John.
