Re: Byte ranges -- formal spec proposal

David - Morris (dwm@shell.portal.com)
Wed, 17 May 95 20:10:18 EDT

On Wed, 17 May 1995, Daniel W. Connolly wrote:

>
> The ampersand character has odd interactions with SGML entity
> reference syntax in HTML.
>
> This URL:
>
> http://host/path;param1=val1&param2=val2
>
> has to be written:
>
> <a href="http://host/path;param1=val1&#38;param2=val2">xxx</a>
> <a href="http://host/path;param1=val1&amp;param2=val2">xxx</a>
>
> in HTML.
>
> I suggest you separate parameters with ';' in stead:
>
> <a href="http://host/path;param1=val1;param2=val2">xxx</a>
>
> Save everybody a little grief.

It would have been nice if &amp; had not been chosen a long time ago,
but it was and I think the value of intuitive association with
the query/get url and url-encoded content outweighs the grief. I write
and software I write generates &amp; when needed. I would speculate
that 99.99% of this proposal will apply to program generated
requests in any case.

Dave Morris