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[tech] trailing '?' for input (was: entry field in gemtext)

nervuri nervuri at disroot.org

Sun Sep 12 15:53:33 BST 2021

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On Fri, 2021-09-10, mbays wrote:

=
/link? Enter your input

I kind of like it, but I don't think adopting such a convention is worththe trouble. It has strange edge cases and it can be confusing.

Ideally this would be a client-only signal, which can be achieved withan empty fragment identifier:

=

/link# Enter your input

But that just doesn't look right. :)

* Clients could render such links differently, e.g. with an inline text
box.

Multiple text boxes might give the false impression of a form.

every CGI implementation I've seen won't differentiate between "/link"
and "/link?".

The problem is in the CGI spec:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3875#section-4.1.7

The server MUST set this variable; if the Script-URI does not include a query component, the QUERY_STRING MUST be defined as an empty string ("").

So in order for a CGI script to do what you suggest:

* Doesn't break clients who ignore the convention, as long as the server
returns 10 to a request with empty query.

it would have to return 10 in response to both "/link" and "/link?",which is not something we can expect everyone to do. For instance, Ihave a script which requests input only on "/link?input", and returnsan intro page when the query is empty.