Re: lynx-dev lynx bug?

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

Mark Papsun <address@hidden> writes on Sat,  29 Apr 1972 15:22:12 -0500 (EST):

>> When I go to http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s1c1a1.htm#brief, I get the
>> same page as when I go to http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s1c1a1.htm. 
>>
>> Why does this happen?

It happens because lynx is does not ignore lettercase in NAME tags:
the file p2s1c1a1.htm contains at line 130 the HTML fragment

        <A NAME=BRIEF>IN BRIEF</A> 

netscape goes to that location without problems.  lynx will too, once
your URL is changed to

        http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s1c1a1.htm#BRIEF

The standard 

@Misc{RFC1808,
  author =       "R. Fielding",
  title =        "{RFC 1808}: Relative Uniform Resource Locators",
  month =        jun,
  year =         "1995",
  bibdate =      "Thu Oct 16 09:34:09 MDT 1997",
  note =         "Updates RFC1738 \cite{RFC1738}. Updated by RFC2368
                 \cite{RFC2368}. Status: PROPOSED STANDARD.",
  URL =          "ftp://ftp.internic.net/rfc/rfc1738.txt,
                 ftp://ftp.internic.net/rfc/rfc1808.txt,
                 ftp://ftp.internic.net/rfc/rfc2368.txt,
                 ftp://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/rfc/rfc1738.txt,
                 ftp://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/rfc/rfc1808.txt,
                 ftp://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/rfc/rfc2368.txt";,
  acknowledgement = ack-nhfb,
  format =       "TXT=34950 bytes",
  online =       "yes",
  status =       "PROPOSED STANDARD",
  updatedby =    "Updated by RFC2368 \cite{RFC2368}.",
  updates =      "Updates RFC1738 \cite{RFC1738}.",
}

says:

   HTML defines a special element "BASE" which, when present in the
   "HEAD" portion of a document, signals that the parser should use the
   BASE element's "HREF" attribute as the base URL for resolving any
   relative URLs.  The "HREF" attribute must be an absolute URL.  Note
   that, in HTML, element and attribute names are case-insensitive.
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This seems to me ambiguous: does it mean the `name' of the attribute,
or its `value', or both?  Five HTML, SGML, and XML books that I
consulted failed to resolve this point, nor did three other RFCs
(1630, 1736, and 1738) that I consulted.  

The pathname part of URLs is definitely case-sensitive, since some
file systems are defined that way, UNIX and Plan9 among them.

The HTML *.dtd files in my archives do not clarify this point
either. They simply define the anchor element like this:

<!ELEMENT A - - (%text)* -(A)>
<!ATTLIST A
...
        name      CDATA   #IMPLIED    -- named link end --
        href      %URL    #IMPLIED    -- URL for linked resource --
...
        >

CDATA is an SGML datatype standing for character data.  

The html.decl file that declares HTML objects to the SGML parser says:

         NAMING   LCNMSTRT ""
                  UCNMSTRT ""
                  LCNMCHAR ".-"
                  UCNMCHAR ".-"
                  NAMECASE GENERAL YES
                           ENTITY  NO

so that &Gamma; and &gamma; are distinct entities, but other names are
not: <TITLE> and <TiTle> and <title> are equivalent.

I therefore do not find a clear specification of whether
<A NAME="value"> has a case-sensitive value or not.

Can anyone else find a binding statement of this point?

In the absence of an official specification, it might make sense for
lynx to try to find the NAME reference first obeying lettercase, and
then, if that fails, try again ignoring lettercase.

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