POST QueryString Escape Sequences

Okay, my client has a product that is posting data to various paging providers (Alltel, Metro, Spring, PageNet, et al). You provide a URL and a QueryString with wildcards (wher e to put the PIN, where to put the message text).

Before it does the post it converts each space to %20. We have met a proprietary service of a client that requires double quotes to be converted (%22).

I'm wondering where is the standard (or RFC) that dictates that spaces must be converted? I'm trying to discern who is at fault, the product that isn't converted double quotes, or the service that is refusing to accept raw double quotes.

This any help?

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt

Quote:

2.4.3. Excluded US-ASCII Characters

Although they are disallowed within the URI syntax, we include here a
description of those US-ASCII characters that have been excluded and
the reasons for their exclusion.

The control characters in the US-ASCII coded character set are not
used within a URI, both because they are non-printable and because
they are likely to be misinterpreted by some control mechanisms.

control = <US-ASCII coded characters 00-1F and 7F hexadecimal>

The space character is excluded because significant spaces may
disappear and insignificant spaces may be introduced when URI are
transcribed or typeset or subjected to the treatment of word-
processing programs. Whitespace is also used to delimit URI in many
contexts.

space = <US-ASCII coded character 20 hexadecimal>

The angle-bracket "<" and ">" and double-quote (") characters are
excluded because they are often used as the delimiters around URI in
text documents and protocol fields. The character "#" is excluded
because it is used to delimit a URI from a fragment identifier in URI
references (Section 4). The percent character "%" is excluded because
it is used for the encoding of escaped characters.

delims = "<" | ">" | "#" | "%" | <">

Berners-Lee, et. al. Standards Track [Page 10]

RFC 2396 URI Generic Syntax August 1998

Other characters are excluded because gateways and other transport
agents are known to sometimes modify such characters, or they are
used as delimiters.

unwise = "{" | "}" | "|" | "\" | "^" | "[" | "]" | "`"

Data corresponding to excluded characters must be escaped in order to
be properly represented within a URI.

Thanks, that helps alot.