Re: Bug or Feature: unescaping & in href attribute while in HTML outputmethod

[David N Bertoni/Cambridge/IBM]

Hi Joe,

I disagree -- this is a bug, and I've stated this many times before.  See:

   http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/appendix/notes.html#h-B.2.2

I think, historically, HTTP servers expected an un-escaped &, so tools
which generate HTML have tried to accomodate this.  But it _is_ a bug.

Newer HTTP servers should do the right thing.

Dave



                                                                                       
                                       
                      Joseph Kesselman                                                 
                                       
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Bertoni/Cambridge/IBM)                                  
                                               Subject: Re: Bug or Feature: unescaping 
&amp; in href attribute while in HTML  
                      01/22/2003 01:20         output method                           
                                       
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I believe that's correct operation. Xalan-J produces the same result.

When generating HTML output, attributes known to represent URIs are escaped
AS PER HTML'S CONVENTION FOR URIS, which is not the same as XML escaping.
Remember, HTML is not yet XML-based; it's SGML-based, and SGML allows some
things that XML doesn't.

______________________________________
Joe Kesselman  / IBM Research