Re: lynx-dev URLs with spaces

[Walter Ian Kaye]

At 05:16a +0000 04/22/2002, Rod Wright didst inscribe upon an 
electronic papyrus:

> I have a site that I'd like have accessible to those who need to use a text
> browser. I like Lynx and I'd like to recommend it. It seems to work fine
> with my site except for addresses that have spaces in them. Is this easily
> remedied there, or do I need to rename my directories and filenames and all
> their addresses and filenames in my program? This may be just a Windows
> thing, allowing long addresses with spaces, but I think Macs have always had
> them.

UNIX has always had them, too. ;)
Actually even PC-DOS let you name files with spaces; it was usually avoided
for simplicity's sake.

> My OS is Windows 98. My web host is CalWeb with an Apache/1.3.22 Server. My
> website is http://life-equals-jesus.org. I'm using Lynx 2.8.3.
>
> I get a 404 when the address is /NextGen/track1/1 God With Us/...
> The address that shows that Lynx was trying to find was /NextGen/track1/1.
> It does not read the rest of the address. Another example is /NextGen/Gospel
> in 3D.html which fails because it tries to find /NextGen/Gospel.

> Could you let me know what I can expect or have to do to make my site
> compatible with Lynx?

It's not a matter of being compatible with Lynx; it's a matter of being
compliant with RFC 1738. If you read it (or its successor, 2396), you
will learn that spaces in URLs _must_ be encoded.

Thus, the HREFs in your links should look like this:

"/NextGen/track1/1%20God%20With%20Us/..."
"/NextGen/Gospel%20in%203D.html"

As you can see, the problem is indeed easily remedied. :)


-Walter



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