byron wrote:after more searching ..RFC 1866 point 8.2.1 wrote:HTTP server implementors, and in particular, CGI
implementors are encouraged to support the use of
`;' in place of `&' to save users the trouble of
escaping `&' characters this way.
this the html 2.0 rfc is dated november 1995.
Yes, that's exactly the sentence the HTML 4.0 spec linked above contains. The point is that it's only a (not even widely known) recommendation, und thus not implemented in many CGIs. But anyway, let's give others a chance to stay on topic here