Perceived inconsistency in py3k documentation

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 08 Dec 2010 00:47:37 +0100, Steve Holden wrote:

> On 12/6/2010 8:00 PM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
>> On Sun, 05 Dec 2010 14:47:38 -0500
>> Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
>>> On 12/5/2010 3:31 AM, Greg wrote:
>>>
>>> For future reference,
>>>
>>>> 1) At http://docs.python.org/py3k/reference/datamodel.html: 2) At
>>>> http://docs.python.org/py3k/library/stdtypes.html:
>>>
>>> do not work because of the trailing :s, at least not with FireFox.
>> 
>> Work fine here. The problem isn't Firefox, it is your e-mail or news
>> client.
>> 
>> Antoine.
>> 
>> 
> In my case also the links don't work, because my newsreader
> (Thunderbird) makes the assumption that the colons are part of the URLs.
> This behavior is common enough that people need to be aware of it.

It seems to me that colons are legal inside URIs and don't need to be 
escaped. If that is the case, then Thunderbird is correct to treat the 
colon as part of the URL, and whatever client Antoine is using is wrong 
to exclude it.

See this thread here for a discussion which concluded that colons are 
legal and don't need to be escaped:

http://markmail.org/message/juowogoeiff44qc4


Personally, I never let any character except whitespace or < > delimiters 
touch a URL. I never know how applications will interpret it.



-- 
Steven