FAQ for the RHTMLForms Package

The default values are not being read correctly from the HTML document. The elements have default values visible in both the browser and the HTML document. But when we create the function, they are not there.
The problem is most likely to be not entirely correct, but colloquial, HTML. Often people use attributes such as checked or selected by itself rather than specifying a value. For example,
      <option name="foo" selected>

      <input type="radio" name="bar" checked>
The HTML parser in some versions of libxml do not handle this in the way we might want. (It is technically incorrect, so it is not really a bug in libxml.)
When I create a function from a form and call it, I keep getting back the same page!
The URI http://gostat.wehi.edu.au/cgi-bin/goStat.pl exhibits this behavior. From what we have deduced, we need to include the Submit form element in the POSTing of the form. Then and only then do we get back the correct answer.

Duncan Temple Lang <duncan@wald.ucdavis.edu>
Last modified: Sun Aug 22 17:56:13 PDT 2004