Re: Subject: Disable %-decoding of URLs? (possible bug?)

Thomas Dickey <[email protected]> Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:32:48 -0400

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.web.lynx.devel
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On Thu, Mar 19, 2026 at 09:34:08PM +0000, Conrad Hughes via Lynx-dev wrote:
> I've recently started to receive HTML emails containing links which
> 'lynx -child -dump' seems to be rendering wrongly.  They contain
> %-encoded URLs
> 
>   <a href="https://foo.bar/otherdomain%2Fpath%2Fetc%3Fparam%3Dval..">
> 
> .. when rendered by lynx these are presented with the %codes decoded (so
> I get otherdomain/path/etc?param=val.. above).  This decoded URL is not
> openable: the server at foo.bar only returns a page for the *%-encoded*
> version of the URL.  This seems to be a new thing, and because I'm using
> the current Debian release of lynx (2.9.2, compiled in 2024) it is
> almost certainly some new piece of e-commerce order tracking craziness,
> but it would be nice to sort out.
> 
> I'm wondering whether
> 
>   (1) there's an option somewhere to prevent lynx from decoding these
>   URLs when rendering them; and
> 
>   (2) do you think this decoding of the URLs counts as a bug, or is it
>   misbehaviour on the part of the software that generates these URLs and
>   fails to handle them?  It's been too long since I was familiar with
>   the standards docs..

Someone reported something like this last summer (still on my to-do list,
since ahead of that was an improvement which I've not found time to
complete -- but this one probably is less effort).
 
> (if I use lynx interactively on the email body, then it correctly opens
> the encoded version of the link, so I am suspecting that this might
> count as a rendering bug)
> 
> Best,
> Conrad
> 
> 

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <[email protected]>
https://invisible-island.net

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