Re: lynx-dev support for ill-formed URLs

[Al Gilman]

At 05:58 AM 2002-04-05 , you wrote:
>On Fri, Apr 05, 2002 at 12:51:57PM +0500, Vlad Harchev wrote:
>>  Hi all!
>> 
>>  Just found a bug in lynx - it doesn't understand URLs like this
>> http://www.openeffect.com?1170469/#469
>> (it tries to lookup the host with name "www.openeffect.com?1170469").
>>  Most popular browsers (NN4.x, mozilla and IE) of course support this form of
>> URLs - they of course treat it as http://www.openeffect.com/?1170469/#469
>
>I seem to recall (will check later, unless someone else does) that numeric
>references aren't legal.  The context at that point was the references in
>lynx's user guide.
> 

Oh, your perfectly correct that a #nnn fragment is not valid HTML.  html:a.name 
and html:any.id have to have an initial alpha char.

<quote 
cite="http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/types.html#type-cdata";>

     * ID and NAME tokens must begin with a letter ([A-Za-z]) and may be
       followed by any number of letters, digits ([0-9]), hyphens ("-"),

</quote>

On the other hand, the above discussion has to do with the the fact that the 
'authority' part of the URI is here terminated with the '?' introducing the 
query part without benefit of an intervening '/'.  In this case, per RFC-2396, 
Lynx is actually wrong in requiring a '/' before the '?'.

<quote 
cite="http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2396.html";>

3.2. Authority Component

   Many URI schemes include a top hierarchical element for a naming
   authority, such that the namespace defined by the remainder of the
   URI is governed by that authority.  This authority component is
   typically defined by an Internet-based server or a scheme-specific
   registry of naming authorities.

      authority     = server | reg_name

   The authority component is preceded by a double slash "//" and is
   terminated by the next slash "/", question-mark "?", or by the end of
                                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   the URI.  Within the authority component, the characters ";", ":",
   "@", "?", and "/" are reserved.

</quote> -- (emphasis added)

That says that Lynx should not be looking for a host of address

"www.openeffect.com?1170469"

as Vlad reports.  Worth checking.

Al

>>  I don't really know whether URLs of the former form are valid or not, but it
>> may be nice to support it since other browsers do.
>> 
>>  Best regards,
>>   -Vlad
>> 
>> 
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>
>-- 
>Thomas E. Dickey <address@hidden>
>http://invisible-island.net
>ftp://invisible-island.net
>
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> 


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