Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Michael A. Puls II]

On 6/27/08, Ian Hickson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>  On Wed, 11 Apr 2007, Michael A. Puls II wrote:
>  >
>  > However, we can't specify this for all URIs (just saying). Flipping raw
>  > backslashes (even though they should really be encoded) in   > href="mailto:uridata";> for example, should not be done.
>  >
>  > If we do specify this, we have to be more specific than "path" because
>  > 'path' does not necessarily mean URI.
>
>  Ok, done.

Awesome! Thanks

-- 
Michael

Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007, Geoffrey Sneddon wrote:
>
> Looking through the spec again, there is nothing about backslashes in 
> URI's path being treated as a forward slash, behaviour needed for 
> compatibility for quite a few websites.

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007, Gervase Markham wrote:
> 
> I would be rather surprised if that were true, given that Firefox 
> doesn't do it and I've never come across a website which broke for that 
> reason. But maybe I live a sheltered life.

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007, Bill Mason wrote:
> 
> It's not that unheard of, though I wouldn't say it's rampant.  Just a 
> quick search on bugzilla.mozilla.org [1] produces some samples.
> 
> Admittedly most of these bugs are old. However the newest one is from 
> January 2007, so the problem still crops up.
> 
> [1] http://tinyurl.com/2evdox

There are quite a few of these, even more if you start looking further in. 
In fact this bug:

   https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64488

...has 49 duplicates just to itself.


I've added a postprocessing step to the URL resolving algorithm that 
concerts all \ characters into / characters.


On Wed, 11 Apr 2007, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> 
> Besides the backslash thing, there are a number of URI processing rules 
> that browsers must follow for web compatibility which are either not 
> required by or directly contradictory to the URI RFCs. Documenting these 
> and fixing the relevant RFCs would be a valuable goal, but possibly 
> beyond the scope of WHATWG.

Could you elaborate on this?


On Thu, 12 Apr 2007, Julian Reschke wrote:
> 
> It seems to me that at least this thread does not point out bugs in 
> RFC3986 or RFC3987, but problems in user agents that do not follow these 
> specs. Or stated otherwise: in reality, URIs in HTML documents are not 
> RFC-compliant URIs or IRIs, but something else. It's up to the working 
> group to either deprecate these kinds of references, or to specify how 
> they should be handled.

Done.


On Wed, 11 Apr 2007, Michael A. Puls II wrote:
> 
> However, we can't specify this for all URIs (just saying). Flipping raw 
> backslashes (even though they should really be encoded) in  href="mailto:uridata";> for example, should not be done.
> 
> If we do specify this, we have to be more specific than "path" because 
> 'path' does not necessarily mean URI.

Ok, done.

-- 
Ian Hickson   U+1047E)\._.,--,'``.fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/   U+263A/,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Anne van Kesteren]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:24:54 +0200, Julian Reschke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
wrote:
It seems to me that at least this thread does not point out bugs in  
RFC3986 or RFC3987, but problems in user agents that do not follow these  
specs. Or stated otherwise: in reality, URIs in HTML documents are not  
RFC-compliant URIs or IRIs, but something else. It's up to the working  
group to either deprecate these kinds of references, or to specify how  
they should be handled.


In reality, most URIs can be found in HTML documents.



In any case, this doesn't seem to be a problem with the URI/IRI RFCs.


Your point of view is interesting though...


--
Anne van Kesteren

Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Julian Reschke]

Anne van Kesteren schrieb:
On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:43:55 +0200, Julian Reschke 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Maciej Stachowiak schrieb:

...
Besides the backslash thing, there are a number of URI processing 
rules that browsers must follow for web compatibility which are 
either not required by or directly contradictory to the URI RFCs. 
Documenting these and fixing the relevant RFCs would be a valuable 
goal, but possibly beyond the scope of WHATWG.

...


Interesting. Details please. In doubt, on the URI mailing list 
().


See this thread from last month for instance:

  
http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2007-March/thread.html#10088 

> ...

Thanks for the pointer.

It seems to me that at least this thread does not point out bugs in 
RFC3986 or RFC3987, but problems in user agents that do not follow these 
specs. Or stated otherwise: in reality, URIs in HTML documents are not 
RFC-compliant URIs or IRIs, but something else. It's up to the working 
group to either deprecate these kinds of references, or to specify how 
they should be handled.


In any case, this doesn't seem to be a problem with the URI/IRI RFCs.

Best regards, Julian

Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Anne van Kesteren]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:43:55 +0200, Julian Reschke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
wrote:

Maciej Stachowiak schrieb:

...
Besides the backslash thing, there are a number of URI processing rules  
that browsers must follow for web compatibility which are either not  
required by or directly contradictory to the URI RFCs. Documenting  
these and fixing the relevant RFCs would be a valuable goal, but  
possibly beyond the scope of WHATWG.

...


Interesting. Details please. In doubt, on the URI mailing list  
().


See this thread from last month for instance:

  
http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2007-March/thread.html#10088


--
Anne van Kesteren

Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Julian Reschke]

Maciej Stachowiak schrieb:

...
Besides the backslash thing, there are a number of URI processing rules 
that browsers must follow for web compatibility which are either not 
required by or directly contradictory to the URI RFCs. Documenting these 
and fixing the relevant RFCs would be a valuable goal, but possibly 
beyond the scope of WHATWG.

...


Interesting. Details please. In doubt, on the URI mailing list 
().


Best regards, Julian

Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Michael A. Puls II]

On 4/11/07, Kornel Lesinski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:02:39 +0100, Geoffrey Sneddon
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Looking through the spec again, there is nothing about backslashes in
> URI's path being treated as a forward slash, behaviour needed for
> compatibility for quite a few websites.

I think it can be added.


If we're specifically talking about URIs that specify paths , then, \
-> / for handling of improperly-encoded URIs is good.

However, we can't specify this for all URIs (just saying). Flipping
raw backslashes (even though they should really be encoded) in mailto:uridata";> for example, should not be done.

If we do specify this, we have to be more specific than "path" because
'path' does not necessarily mean URI.

--
Michael

Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Apr 11, 2007, at 8:28 AM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:


At 3:13 PM +0100 UTC, on 4/11/07, Gervase Markham wrote:


Geoffrey Sneddon wrote:
Looking through the spec again, there is nothing about  
backslashes in

URI's path being treated as a forward slash, behaviour needed for
compatibility for quite a few websites.


I would be rather surprised if that were true


Be surpirsed: 

I've no idea how many sites rely on this, but given that Safari  
copied this

behaviour apparently Apple found the problem big enough to bother.


Besides the backslash thing, there are a number of URI processing  
rules that browsers must follow for web compatibility which are  
either not required by or directly contradictory to the URI RFCs.  
Documenting these and fixing the relevant RFCs would be a valuable  
goal, but possibly beyond the scope of WHATWG.


Regards,
Maciej

Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Kornel Lesinski]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:02:39 +0100, Geoffrey Sneddon  
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


Looking through the spec again, there is nothing about backslashes in  
URI's path being treated as a forward slash, behaviour needed for  
compatibility for quite a few websites.


I think it can be added.

RFC 1738 calls backslash "unsafe" (RFC 2396 "unwise") character and says  
it must be encoded, so this change won't affect any valid URLs/URIs.


I've tested how browsers handle path in  tag:
IE6, Opera 9.2, Safari 2 translate "\" to "/". Camino (Gecko 1.8) and iCab  
3 translate it to "%5C".
All browsers leave "%5C" alone, meaning that this change won't stop anyone  
from accessing resources that really contain backslash in the path (tested  
Apache2 on OS X 10.4).


--
regards, Kornel Lesiński

Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Kornel Lesinski]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 15:13:09 +0100, Gervase Markham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
wrote:


Looking through the spec again, there is nothing about backslashes in  
URI's path being treated as a forward slash, behaviour needed for  
compatibility for quite a few websites.


I would be rather surprised if that were true, given that Firefox  
doesn't do it and I've never come across a website which broke for that  
reason. But maybe I live a sheltered life.


Working for osiolki.net (site that blacklists IE-only websites), I've come  
across a few.


http://www.google.com/search?q=site:osiolki.net+backslash&filter=0  
(+ there are 4 more non-public cases).


--
regards, Kornel Lesiński

Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Anne van Kesteren]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 18:38:11 +0200, Jon Barnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
wrote:

Is this more the realm of an RFC (3986 and 3987) instead of HTML5?
Jon Barnett


Probably, unless you restrict the special handling to a few HTML  
attributes.



--
Anne van Kesteren

Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Jon Barnett]

Is this more the realm of an RFC (3986 and 3987) instead of HTML5?
Jon Barnett

Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Sander Tekelenburg]

At 3:13 PM +0100 UTC, on 4/11/07, Gervase Markham wrote:

> Geoffrey Sneddon wrote:
>> Looking through the spec again, there is nothing about backslashes in
>> URI's path being treated as a forward slash, behaviour needed for
>> compatibility for quite a few websites.
>
> I would be rather surprised if that were true

Be surpirsed: 

I've no idea how many sites rely on this, but given that Safari copied this
behaviour apparently Apple found the problem big enough to bother.


-- 
Sander Tekelenburg
The Web Repair Initiative: 

Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Philip Taylor]

On 11/04/07, Gervase Markham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Geoffrey Sneddon wrote:
> Looking through the spec again, there is nothing about backslashes in
> URI's path being treated as a forward slash, behaviour needed for
> compatibility for quite a few websites.

I would be rather surprised if that were true, given that Firefox
doesn't do it and I've never come across a website which broke for that
reason. But maybe I live a sheltered life.


https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64488 has quite a few
examples of people finding broken websites caused by backslashes. (But
maybe some/most of those examples have been fixed after being told
that they were wrong and that Firefox's behaviour wasn't going to
change?)

--
Philip Taylor
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Bill Mason]

Gervase Markham wrote:
Looking through the spec again, there is nothing about backslashes in 
URI's path being treated as a forward slash, behaviour needed for 
compatibility for quite a few websites.


I would be rather surprised if that were true, given that Firefox 
doesn't do it and I've never come across a website which broke for that 
reason. But maybe I live a sheltered life.


It's not that unheard of, though I wouldn't say it's rampant.  Just a 
quick search on bugzilla.mozilla.org [1] produces some samples.


Admittedly most of these bugs are old. However the newest one is from 
January 2007, so the problem still crops up.


[1] http://tinyurl.com/2evdox

--
Bill Mason
Accessible Internet
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://accessibleinter.net/

Re: [whatwg] IE/Win treats backslashes in path as forward slashes

[Gervase Markham]

Geoffrey Sneddon wrote:
Looking through the spec again, there is nothing about backslashes in 
URI's path being treated as a forward slash, behaviour needed for 
compatibility for quite a few websites.


I would be rather surprised if that were true, given that Firefox 
doesn't do it and I've never come across a website which broke for that 
reason. But maybe I live a sheltered life.


Gerv