[whatwg] multipart/form-data filename encoding: unicode and special characters

[Ian Hickson]

On Thu, 3 May 2012, Evan Jones wrote:
> On May 3, 2012, at 17:09 , Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> >
> > Yes. I think we should define multipart/form-data directly in HTML and 
> > thereby obsolete http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2388 as it is outdated 
> > and not maintained.
> 
> Right; that would be ideal. Despite the fact that HTML5 references that 
> RFC, browsers don't really follow it.
> 
> I would be interested in trying to help with this, but again I would 
> certainly need some guidance from people who know more about the 
> vagaries of how the various browsers encode their form parameters / 
> uploaded file names, and why things got that way. It probably would not 
> be helpful for me to try to draft an update to the spec without getting 
> the right implementers on board.

If this is still something for which you have some time available, then 
the starting point for anything like this would be test cases, lots and 
lots of test cases. In this case, it would have to be something like a 
server that echoes the precise bytes sent by the client, for a huge 
variety of different setups:

 - various submission encodings
 - various form field names and types
 - various file submission filenames

...etc.

I'd be happy to advise if this is something that still interests you.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'