[Cosmo-dev] Allowable Characters in Cosmo Usernames

[John Townsend]

heh heh.

You have a good point. I agree with you. I take back my request.

Am I still a trouble-maker? :-)

--> towns


On May 19, 2006, at 7:45 AM, Todd Agulnick wrote:

> On 5/18/2006 7:11 PM, John Townsend wrote:
>> I would add @ so that people can use email addresses. So if you  
>> add @, +1 from me.
>>
>>
>
> Trouble-maker! Recall that usernames play a dual role as both  
> account identifier and URL component. '@' is one of the several  
> characters in the list of reserved characters in URL's (full list  
> is ";" | "/" | "?" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+" | "$" | ",") which  
> means that if you allow '@' in usernames you have to ensure that  
> you escape it in any place that you generate a URL, and users who  
> enter the URL into a browser without escaping it themselves may  
> find the URL doesn't work. Usernames w/@ in them will also break  
> any clients (like Foxmarks) that use the form:
>
>    http://username:password@cosmo-demo.osafoundation.org/path/ 
> resource.txt
>
> to incorporate authentication information into the URL.
>
> And finally, there's the concern I'd have on the usability front as  
> people register accounts with account names that happen to look  
> like email addresses (which they can't change, and to which Cosmo  
> will never send password reminders, etc.) alongside an recognized  
> email address (that they can change, and that Cosmo *will* use for  
> communication with the user).
>
> So, for the reasons cited above, I'd recommend against doing this.
>
> -Todd
>