[whatwg] Is there any reason for the continued existence of enctype attribute at the form element

[Boris Zbarsky]

On 10/11/09 6:59 AM, Mark Kaplun wrote:
> I think that in practice no one is writing his own mime handling
> routines to handle the data in a post message, and people just use a
> framework which handles it for them.

While this may be true (and I'm not sure it's as true as one would like) 
some of these "frameworks" are more or less capable than others.  Some 
expect the data in a _very_ particular format (such that changing the 
order of elements in the submitted data, for example breaks them); I 
would not expect them to switch easily between different enctypes.

> I don't know enough about other server languages but I would assume that
> handling the post mime type automagically is one of the basic candies
> that every modern server language provides.

A surprising amount of form POST processing seems to happen in an exe on 
the server, not in any sort of modern scripting language.  At least 
based on the bugs we've gotten filed whenever we change anything about it.

-Boris