Handling + in document searches

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Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1993 23:24 PDT
From: "Tony Johnson (415) 926 2278" <TONYJ@scs.slac.stanford.edu>
Subject: Handling + in document searches
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I would like to reraise an issue I have mentioned before but not obtained a 
clear answer on. 

At SLAC we are using WWW as a means of accessing a set of High Energy Physics 
databases maintained here (SPIRES). One common usage is to search for 
particular particle types, for example PI+. There is an immediate problem in 
that the + symbol is treated specially in search strings by the current 
http-daemons, namely it is changed to a space (for largely historic reasons).

I would like to propose the following:

======

ALL browsers should perform the following translations on search strings typed 
in by the user:

   + " % and <space> should be replaced by %nn  where nn is  the ASCII         
                            code for the translated character 

ALL daemons should translate %nn in search strings back to the appropriate 
character. For historical reasons the + should continue to be translated to
<space> as now.

======

Comments????? Can we do it tomorrow?

Tony