On both the HTTP and HTML working group lists, there has been some
discussion of what to accept as end-of-line in text object bodies,
especially text/html.
I thought it might be a good idea to do some tests with existing browsers,
so I made some test files and served them up with the NCSA httpd (which
seems to put the files out on the net with no attempt to change EOLs.)
Among the browsers I have handy, it looks like there are several different
ways used to "tolerate" different EOL representations. (This is just a
quick eyeball evaluation of the results so I may miss some subtle issues.)
The test documents served up with NCSA httpd v 1.3 are at
http://nuinfo.nwu.edu/world/testeol/
Each is an html file with several lines of <PRE> text. Each document had
different End-of-Line strings.
The list below indicates the appearance of the results in different browsers.
Lynx version 2.1
lf normal
crlf normal
cr one line
lf cr normal
crsplf extra blank lines at top
(This looks like LF->EOL, CR-> ?? )
Mac Mosaic 1.0.3
lf normal
crlf double spaced
cr normal
lf cr double spaced
crsplf double spaced
(This looks like LF->EOL, CR->EOL )
Mac Netscape 0.96
lf normal
crlf normal
cr normal
lf cr double spaced
crsplf double spaced
(This looks like LF->EOL, CR->EOL, CRLF->EOL)
MacWeb 1.00A3
lf normal
crlf normal
cr normal
lf cr double spaced
crsplf double spaced
(This looks like LF->EOL, CR->EOL, CRLF->EOL)
Win Mosaic 2.0 a5
lf normal
crlf normal
cr one line
lf cr normal
crsplf normal
(This looks like LF-> EOL)
Win Netscape 0.9 beta
lf normal
crlf normal
cr normal
lf cr double spaced
crsplf double spaced
(This looks like LF->EOL, CR->EOL, CRLF->EOL)
CERN WWW linemode client ver 1.3c (WWWLib 1.1)
lf normal
crlf normal
cr one line
lf cr normal
crsplf normal
(This looks like LF-> EOL)
---
Albert Lunde Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu