Re: Submitting input-form data to server

"Tony Johnson (415) 926 2278" <TONYJ@scs.slac.stanford.edu>
Date: Sun, 05 Sep 1993 13:31:48 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Tony Johnson (415) 926 2278" <TONYJ@scs.slac.stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: Submitting input-form data to server
To: marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Cc: wei@sting.berkeley.edu, hackers@ora.com, putz@parc.xerox.com,
        www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch, ebina@ncsa.uiuc.edu, robm@ncsa.uiuc.edu
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Marc writes:
>Pei Y. Wei writes:
>> * What syntax do we choose for marking up a property list? SGML or MIME?
>
>How 'bout neither?  Forms submit queries; why not stick with the
>current query syntax?  That is, 'url?query' ... with 'query' looking
>something like:
>
>        name=value&name=value&name=value
>
>...with the '=' and '&' characters used as reserved characters
>(escaped as %xx in any of the name or value strings, as usual).

In the sub-group that discussed this issue at W5 we had concluded that the 
method of sending the form response as part of the URL would not really 
scale elegantly in the future. Consider the form:

Your name:<INPUT name="address"><p>
5000 word essay describing why you should win the free trip to Australia:
<input name="essay" size = 80x500>

This would clearly result in monstrous URL's, yet it is not 
unrepresentative of some potential uses of forms.

Since HTTP/1.0 would support new methods in addition to GET, a 
reasonable possibility seemed the addition of a new method (say SUBMITFORM)
for submitting completed forms. Maybe the reply method should be something
that can be specified ACTION modifier of the <FORM> tag, with the possibilities 
being 

mailto:<e-mail address>     Form sent as e-mail to specified recipient
http:<address>              Indicates to return form data as a query string
submitform:<address>        Indicates to submit the form using the SUBMITFORM
                            method.

Comments?

Tony