tlug: HTTP question

["Frank Bennett (=?iso-2022-jp?B?GyRCJVUlaSVzJS8kWSVNJUMlSBsoQg==?= )" <bennett@example.com>]

Dear all,

As part of the (Linux-based :) open source translation project that
I am working up here, I need to sling text strings back and forth between
browsers and our Web server.  I've been using encoded CGI "?" strings
for this purpose.  The idea is that in the course of stepping through a
series of menus, users append bits of translated text to an archive, and
the archive is available for everyone on the Net in real time.

A gotcha that just snagged me is that a block of about 450 characters
(225 zenkaku kanji) encoded for export seems to get snipped off in the
middle.  Because the string is followed by control variables for the CGI,
the beast flashes back to the opening menu (the default when no variables
are set), and all of the settings are lost.

I'm testing with MS IE (ver.4).  I can see, from the text that shows in
the address box when I try to send the CGI the large block of text,
that the truncation is happening in MS IE.

My questions are:

  o Is this truncation behaviour common to all browsers?  (I'm a bit
    irritated by this, to be honest; I can see why a *server* might
    want to squash lines that appear to be too long, but I can't think of
    any utility in having a client preemptively impose such a
    restriction).

  o If not, is there a browser out there in common use that is entirely
    free of length limits of this kind?

  o If not, is there an alternative, incompetely traumatic method
    for sending archive text of arbitrary length to our server from
    browser clients out in the field?  (Methods that require the user to
    configure their machine specially to cope with our site are *not*
    acceptable).

If anyone wants to check out the site, it is at:

  http://www.nomolog.nagoya-u.ac.jp/cgi-bin/trans/nuts.cgi

If you select "List of Projects" and hit "Go" you'll be asked for
a password; at the bottom of the screen, there is a button "Sign Up".
Hit that, give yourself a password and, if you like, tell us who you
are; then use "Go" or whatever to get back to the login screen.  Once
you log in, you can access the archives.  The provision that exhibited
the gotcha was the Japanese text of Section 4 in the Code of
Civil Procedure.  This is for display only, so disabling the
variable got things working again.  But the problem may reappear when
we get around to translating that text. ...

Many thanks for any help you can offer,
-- 
-x80
Frank G Bennett, Jr         @@
Faculty of Law, Nagoya Univ () email: bennett@example.com
Tel: +81[(0)52]789-2239     () WWW:   http://rumple.soas.ac.uk/~bennett/

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