Re: File upload in HTML forms

Paul Burchard (burchard@horizon.math.utah.edu)
Sun, 25 Sep 94 20:15:48 -0600


I believe file submission is mainly a browser issue -- one should be
able to (say) drag-n-drop a file into any TEXTAREA and have the
contents POSTed as the field's value. The author of the page cannot
(and perhaps should not try to) anticipate in which fields the user
might want to place the contents of a file instead of typing by hand.

Your [nebel@xsoft.sd.xerox.com (Ernesto Nebel)] proposal does provide
some additional features that could be of use to server maintainers.
On the down side, in addition to requiring changes of both browsers
and servers, it would posit some rather fundamental changes to the
current model of HTTP as a stateless protocol. I don't think such a
change should be made lightly.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Burchard <burchard@math.utah.edu>
``I'm still learning how to count backwards from infinity...''
--------------------------------------------------------------------