Entities in Attribute Values

[David Schach]

The use of the & as the CGI separator character is a well established
convention and unlikely to change.  It will continue whether we support
it or not.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Arjun Ray [SMTP:aray at q2.net]
> Sent:	Thursday, June 12, 1997 10:03 PM
> To:	xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
> Subject:	Re: Entities in Attribute Values
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, 12 Jun 1997, David Schach wrote:
> 
> > Because entity references are allowed inside ot attribute values, it
> is
> > not possible to store an unmodified URL with data in an attribute.
> For
> > example, the following XML is not valid because the '&''s are not
> > escaped inside of SELF's HREF value.  
> 
> This is a problem only if '&' *must* be the field separator. Why not
> something else,, like ';' ?
> 
> > 	<SELF
> >
> HREF="http://someserver/scripts/oleisapi2.dll/comics.custom.cdf?comics
> =o
> > n&dilbert=on&calvin=on&peanuts=on" />
> > 
> > This makes it inconvenient to store URL's in XML files.  Would it
> anyone
> > be interested in changing entity processing to fix this?
> 
> IMHO, there's no need for that. Or, at any rate, there shouldn't be.
> Using
> '&' as a field separator in "query URLs" is a historical artefact of
> lack
> of RTFM. The problem was recognized reasonably early too, and a fix
> was
> proposed, but no HTML browser implementor of, ah, consequence ever got
> a
> Round Tuit. 
> 
> From RFC 1866, Section 8.2.1 "The form-urlencoded Media Type":
> 
>            NOTE - The URI from a query form submission can be
>             used in a normal anchor style hyperlink.
>             Unfortunately, the use of the `&' character to
>             separate form fields interacts with its use in SGML
>             attribute values as an entity reference delimiter.
>             For example, the URI `http://host/?x=1&y=2' must be
>             written `<a href="http://host/?x=1&#38;y=2"' or `<a
>             href="http://host/?x=1&amp;y=2">'.
> 
>             HTTP server implementors, and in particular, CGI
>             implementors are encouraged to support the use of
>             `;' in place of `&' to save users the trouble of
>             escaping `&' characters this way.
>  
> We're not committed to perpetauting mistakes, are we?
> 
> 
> Arjun
> 
> 
> 
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