Re: Spaces in bare URLs?

[Nicolas Goaziou]

Hello,

"Mark E. Shoulson" <address@hidden> writes:

> So, in the "new" org-mode, we've done away with standard
> percent-encoding of URLs, in favor of a more... idiosyncratic method
> using backslashes.

...

> So... what is one supposed to do about spaces in URLs? 
> When they're in [[link format]], with or without a description, it's no 
> problem, but org-mode has a long tradition of support for "bare" URLs too.  
> We're used to being able to type a URL or other link format
> and have it work, right?  And that doesn't seem (to me) to be a thing
> that we'd want to abandon.
>
> In org-mode 9.1.9, I can type "info:elisp#Syntactic%20Font%20Lock" and it'd 
> work.  (Maybe not the greatest example, since %-encoding is seen more with 
> http-based URIs, but still).  The
> percent-encoding is well-established and reliable

Unfortunately, that wasn't reliable. As it is not idempotent, you can
never know how many times you need to decode an URL before sending it.

Imagine I have a file called "foo%2000.org". Should I link it
file:foo%252000.org or file:foo%2000.org? You prefer the former. But
what if I forget about the rules?

Now, what Org is expected to do with file:foo%252000.org ? Decoding it
unconditionally lead to bug reports scattered throughout the years. So
did ignoring encoding.

The thing is URL encoding is not for human consumption, i.e., we
shouldn't have to deal with it.

> and you can *count* on it when nothing else works, because you can
> always fall back on plain ascii.  

Current backslash escaping is also well established, and as much
ASCII-like as anyone would expect.

> But that won't work in org-mode 9.3.6.  Nor will
> "info:elisp#Syntactic Font Lock" or "info:elisp#Syntactic\ Font\ Lock"
> or any other variant I've tried, short of putting it inside [[]]s or
> <>s (in other words, no longer using a bare URL).

True, but that's a minor annoyance.

You apparently prefer to encode a URL manually, replacing each space
with %20 (and other characters with more baroque escape sequences),
rather than adding <...> (or [[...]]) around it and be done with it.
Perhaps this one was the bad idea, after all?

> I think dropping percent-escaping of URLs was a bad idea, in terms of 
> breaking past usage and lack of consistency with the standard used for URLs 
> everywhere else.  But I don't know what impelled the
> decision to drop it, so I might well be missing something important.  
>
> At any rate, it does leave a hole in what org-mode can do, a thing it used to 
> be able to do and can't anymore.  Is there a right way to do
> this?  (without using delimiters.)

It was not a bad idea. It is not perfect, but it is still better than
what we had, because it is unambiguous.

You can still use <...> delimiters, or, as you noted, [[...]].
I understand it breaks your workflow, but there is no loss of feature,
and no hole either: you can still link to URL with spaces in it.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Goaziou