[WSG] More on character encoding
I am assuming there are other web developers in Exchange environments that might have some insight into a problem I'm having. It's standards-related, I promise. We're a company that utilizes an Exchange server for mail and scheduling. We have lots of email addresses and lots of email distribution groups. Our Net Admins have established a naming convention for distribution groups that enforces a desired sort in Outlook. Here is a recent example: %Company Code-Cross-Functional Team (Distribution Group) My problem mostly revolves around this fairly new cross-functional team naming convention. You may have noticed the problem already. The group name starts with a percent sign. That means their email address starts with a percent sign. If everyone stayed completely within Outlook for email generation, that'd be just fine...Outlook doesn't care. But webpages with mailto links that fire up a mail client, even Outlook, *do*. And cross-functional teams in our company are small enough that they want to link to their email address in simple mailto links on their various webpages. The percent sign is an escape character. On its own, a mail client (even Outlook) looks two characters beyond the percent sign and tries to figure out what character you really meant. Since in my case, this is usually %ME it's outside of the conventions for escaped characters. Outlook interprets %ME as ?. I don't believe that using a percent sign in an email address is best form. But my opinion doesn't matter. I'll need to use standards published by recognized bodies of knowledge to make my case. The W3C helps a little, calling a percent sign a reserved character not for use in URIs. IANA establishes that mailtos are indeed URIs in RFC2368. This is helpful in establishing that mailto is a URI scheme, but this RFC also suggests escaping the escape (%25) to make a percent sign. IETF in its RFC3986 suggests the same thing but reads a little more ominous about using percents. Gah! Are there any other resources people are aware of that may help me make this argument using standards rationale? Jona ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] More on character encoding
this link might help http://www.remote.org/jochen/mail/info/chars.html Charlie http://www.bartlettdesign.co.uk On 11/23/05, Jona Decker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am assuming there are other web developers in Exchange environmentsthat might have some insight into a problem I'm having. It's standards-related, I promise.We're a company that utilizes an Exchange server for mail andscheduling. We have lots of email addresses and lots of emaildistribution groups. Our Net Admins have established a naming convention for distribution groups that enforces a desired sort in Outlook. Here isa recent example:%Company Code-Cross-Functional Team (Distribution Group)My problem mostly revolves around this fairly new cross-functional team naming convention. You may have noticed the problem already. Thegroup name starts with a percent sign. That means their email addressstarts with a percent sign. If everyone stayed completely within Outlook for email generation, that'd be just fine...Outlook doesn't care. Butwebpages with mailto links that fire up a mail client, even Outlook,*do*. And cross-functional teams in our company are small enough that they want to link to their email address in simple mailto links on theirvarious webpages.The percent sign is an escape character. On its own, a mail client (evenOutlook) looks two characters beyond the percent sign and tries to figure out what character you really meant. Since in my case, this isusually %ME it's outside of the conventions for escaped characters.Outlook interprets %ME as ?.I don't believe that using a percent sign in an email address is best form. But my opinion doesn't matter. I'll need to use standardspublished by recognized bodies of knowledge to make my case. The W3Chelps a little, calling a percent sign a reserved character not for usein URIs. IANA establishes that mailtos are indeed URIs in RFC2368. This is helpful in establishing that mailto is a URI scheme, but this RFCalso suggests escaping the escape (%25) to make a percent sign. IETF inits RFC3986 suggests the same thing but reads a little more ominous about using percents. Gah! Are there any other resources people areaware of that may help me make this argument using standards rationale?Jona**The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfmfor some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] More on character encoding
Jona Decker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...]Are there any other resources people are aware of that may help me make this argument using standards rationale? According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address the character is valid in the local part of an address according to RFC 2822. However, WCAG Checkpoint 14.1 would be appropriate if the email address will be rendered on the page at any time: 14.1 Use the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site's content. [Priority 1] http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#gl-facilitate-comprehension Again, if it will be visible checkpoint 13.1 also applies: 13.1 Clearly identify the target of each link. [Priority 2] Link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#gl-facilitate-navigation Jon Tan www.gr0w.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
