Re: lynx-dev Invalid cookies

[David Woolley]

> Requesting a directory is a valid request. The server should provide a
> default document from that directory.

You need the final / to request a directory.  If you look at the HTML
generated for a typical directory listing, you will find that the URLs
are relative and don't include the directory name; the base URL needs to
have the final /.  Also, if you do have an index document in the directory
(default is a Microsoft concept, see below), and that was why you were
getting a redirect, the redirect would most sensibly be to that document,
not to the directory.

Strictly speaking, though, components in a URL don't reference directories;
that just happens to be the logical interpretation when mapping them onto
static pages in a file system.  With creative CGI, at least with non-MS
servers, you can compose URLs that look like file URLs, but are actually
purely dynamic content; unfortunately the trend is the opposite - to push
static resources through a CGI handler that uses serial numbers as form
type parameters.

Microsoft's use of default.htm, reflects, in part, an assumption that one
is dealing with a file system, and also reflects that commercial web sites
don't view URLs ending in / as requests for an index of available information,
but rather as just an ordinary page, and don't like the idea that they 
augment a default index.

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