Re: HTML Validation Form [Was: Nesting of HTML elements ]

Marc VanHeyningen (mvanheyn@cs.indiana.edu)
Mon, 31 Oct 1994 11:15:14 -0500

Thus wrote:
>Marc VanHeyningen wrote:
>> Actually the spec has
>> varied a bit over time, but both RFC 1630 describing WWW URLs and the
>> latest standards-track URL definition from the URI WG declare that the
>> tilde may not appear in URLs unencoded.
>
>Why?

For full details, you'd probably want to read the URI WG archive. For
a brief description of why, read the spec. Essentially, it's
considered national (use can vary) and unsafe.

>Given that HTTP is 8 bit clean, the only reason I can think of is people
>passing URLs around in mail, through something awfull like an ASCII-EBCDIC
>gateway. Is that it?

What does HTTP have to do with URLs? URLs are supposed to be very
transportable, enough so they can be mailed or printed in newspapers
or scrawled on the back of a cocktail napkin.

--
Marc VanHeyningen  <http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/mvanheyn.html>