[spec] What to do of fragments when there is a redirection

[Solderpunk]

Thanks for weighing in on this thread.  Of all the outstanding issues,
this is actually the one where I have the least clear idea of what we
should do.

On Mon Dec 28, 2020 at 4:25 AM CET, John Cowan wrote:

> > 3) If the original URL has a fragment and the redirect doesn't, the
> > > client
> > > MUST apply the original fragment when the redirected resource is
> > > retrieved.
> >
>
> This part I do understand. Since the meaning of a fragment depends on
> the
> media type and not the rest of the URL, then if a server is redirecting
> a
> request to the document's new home, the client should carry over the
> fragment id from the original URL. In this case the fragment id doesn't
> participate in the protocol at all.
>
> This rule should exist even if text/gemini doesn't have a fragment
> definition, because Gemini protocol can host any media type including
> HTML.

Okay, so original URL fragments should be carried over to redirect URLs
if the redirect URL has no fragment (which I still suspect perhaps
should be the only valid case).

What about queries?

To some extent, the issue of a redirect URL having a query in it is
similar to a link in a text/gemini document having a query in it, which
was slightly controversial.  Not so much in the sense that people
thought it should be disallowed, but that it was widely believed clients
should handle such things very carefully and give the user a chance to
confirm or edit the query string contents.

Should redirect URLs be allowed to contain queries?

If an original URL has a query in it but the client gets back a redirect
URL without a query, should the original query be appended?

Cheers,
Solderpunk