[whatwg] Web Forms 2.0 (WD 30 June 2004): 'separator' Attribute

[Ian Hickson]

On Thu, 1 Jul 2004, Dave Hodder wrote:
>
> I would like to suggest an additional, optional attribute for the 'form'
> element, called 'separator'.  It would also be valid for 'input'
> elements with a 'type' attribute of either 'submit' or 'image'.
>
> Example usage:
>
>      <form action="process-form.py" method="get" separator=";">
>
> 'separator' accepts either a semicolon character or an ampersand
> character (the default).

Given that older UAs would keep posting with ampersand as the separator,
wouldn't this cause the servers to have to perform some sort of heuristics
to determine what the separator was?


> The 'separator' attribute is similiar to the 'separator' attribute of
> the XForms 1.0 'submission' element, except for the different default
> value.  (The difference is to ensure backwards compatibility with HTML
> forms.)  The existence of this attribute would hopefully ease migration
> from Web Forms 2.0 to XForms when the time is right.

Since XForms supports using the backwards-compatible "&" separator, why
would this ease transition? Surely the best transition path here would be
to use "&" up to the point where the system is converted from HTML to
XForms, and then simply switch the XForms and servers simultaneously.

I don't understand the advantage of this attribute.

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