Wouter van Ooijen wrote:

>>> However, this problem is so prevalent that other browsers, such as IE
>>> and Opera, automatically translate '\' to '/' before sending a URL
>>> back to the server, thereby hiding the underlying problem.
>> 
>> ... and making it work. I'm in general all for programs "making it
>> work", and consider this as "doing what it should, really" :) 
>> 
>> Is there any disadvantage to the behavior of IE, Opera and the like?
> 
> Yes: an error goes unnoticed.

That's a problem for a web developer, not for a user. If a tool makes it
that web developers' errors go unnoticed, I'm all for it. Developers should
use different tools than the users (in addition to the same browsers, of
course) to check for errors. I expect that from a web developer (and for
example my browser settings are quite different when I'm checking a site
than when I'm visiting a site).

> The problem with "doing what it should, really" (as opposed to "doing
> what it is instructed to do, literally") is that not everyone will agree
> on what should be done.

We may not even have an agreement on what means "doing what it is
instructed to do, literally". I may think that it was instructed to get the
images embedded in that page. Some browsers managed to get them, others
didn't.


> Compare: I gave a big problem with the way Windows handles 
> uppper/lowercase file names. 

You shouldn't rely on anything related to the case of filenames on Windows.
Windows is by definition not file system case aware. If you have a problem
with that, you need to use a different OS (or a program that does what you
want on top of the Windows API). It's as simple as that. This is a
completely different issue. From your comments, it seems you want a
case-sensitive file system, and Windows doesn't have this -- by definition. 

Gerhard

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