From: Austin Ziegler <austin@...>
Date: 2002-10-18T23:11:05+09:00
Subject: Re: URI bug or bad URI?

On Fri, 18 Oct 2002 17:13:56 +0900, Christian Kruse wrote:
> Stefan Scholl <stefan.scholl@brave.de> wrote:
>> Alan Chen <alan@digikata.com> wrote:
>>> mailto = URI.new(
>>> 'mailto:user@domain.com?subject=test%20(@test=10)
>> There's no "?subject" in mailto:
> Of course there is. You can add a querystring. But brackets are
> not allowed in URIs, neither are @s.

Neither of these statements is true.

Specifically for mailboxes:
   [From RFC2368, http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2368.html]

   Following the syntax conventions of RFC 1738 [RFC1738], a "mailto"
   URL has the form:

     mailtoURL  =  "mailto:" [ to ] [ headers ]
     to         =  #mailbox
     headers    =  "?" header *( "&" header )
     header     =  hname "=" hvalue
     hname      =  *urlc
     hvalue     =  *urlc

   "#mailbox" is as specified in RFC 822 [RFC822]. This means that it
   consists of zero or more comma-separated mail addresses, possibly
   including "phrase" and "comment" components. Note that all URL
   reserved characters in "to" must be encoded: in particular,
   parentheses, commas, and the percent sign ("%"), which commonly 
occur
   in the "mailbox" syntax.

   "hname" and "hvalue" are encodings of an RFC 822 header name and
   value, respectively. As with "to", all URL reserved characters 
must
   be encoded.

   The special hname "body" indicates that the associated hvalue is 
the
   body of the message. The "body" hname should contain the content 
for
   the first text/plain body part of the message. The mailto URL is
   primarily intended for generation of short text messages that are
   actually the content of automatic processing (such as "subscribe"
   messages for mailing lists), not general MIME bodies.

   Within mailto URLs, the characters "?", "=", "&" are reserved.

   Because the "&" (ampersand) character is reserved in HTML, any 
mailto
   URL which contains an ampersand must be spelled differently in 
HTML
   than in other contexts.  A mailto URL which appears in an HTML
   document must use "&amp;" instead of "&".

   Also note that it is legal to specify both "to" and an "hname" 
whose
   value is "to". That is,

     mailto:addr1%2C%20addr2

     is equivalent to

     mailto:?to=addr1%2C%20addr2

     is equivalent to

     mailto:addr1?to=addr2

   8-bit characters in mailto URLs are forbidden. MIME encoded words 
(as
   defined in [RFC2047]) are permitted in header values, but not for 
any
   part of a "body" hname.

For URIs in general:
    [From RFC1738, http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1738.html]

    Many URL schemes reserve certain characters for a special
    meaning: their appearance in the scheme-specific part of the URL
    has a designated semantics. If the character corresponding to an
    octet is reserved in a scheme, the octet must be encoded.  The
    characters ";", "/", "?", ":", "@", "=" and "&" are the
    characters which may be reserved for special meaning within a
    scheme. No other characters may be reserved within a scheme.

-austin
-- Austin Ziegler, austin@halostatue.ca on 2002.10.18 at 10.03.34