[lug] speaking of HTML validation and validator.w3.org

[D. Stimits]

Tkil wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "DS" == D Stimits <stimits at idcomm.com> writes:
> 
> DS> Unfortunately, the validator still does not like it. I URL encoded
> DS> the body text, and special characters, including spaces. I still
> DS> had to use an actual "...?subject=...&body=..." statement with
> DS> ampersand (URL encoding it takes away the special meaning that is
> DS> needed for those '?'  and '&' characters, and they then show up in
> DS> the subject line instead of body),
> 
> Yes, I misspoke; I meant what you did, where each of the header/value
> pairs was URL-encoded, not mangling the actual functional parts of the
> URL.  Sorry about that.
> 
> DS> but it was completely URL encoded where possible, and it worked
> DS> fine, but the w3 validator still complains that body is an unknown
> DS> entity. I'm wondering if maybe the loose.dtd/transitional HTML 4.0
> DS> does not understand "body"? This would explain why it thinks
> DS> "body" is an unknown entity, despite the RFC.
> 
> Hm... if it's complaining about entities, maybe you need to HTML-quote
> the ampersands?
> 
>    mailto:foo at bar?subject=hi%20there&body=foo%20bar

I was ahead of you on that one, and tried it out yesterday. No go, it
then does not believe that "body" is an entity, and the emailer then
makes the entire body part of the subject. The html encoding has the
same effect in this regard as does URL encoding...it neutralizes the
control notation and turns it into an uninterpreted text character
without special meaning. Perhaps I'll send an email to the w3.org site
and ask about it, it sure seems like either the validator is incorrect,
or else that RFC does not apply the the loose.dtd/transitional html 4.0.

D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com