[Dspace-general] Clickable author urls

[Grant Barrie]

We have a mildly irritating problem when sending clickable links to
author pages via email.  We use an APA-like citation style that follows
the author's surname and initials convention.  This results in a url for
the individual author's that ends with a period (below).

http://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/items-by-author?author=Dantas%2C+A.

Unfortunately, almost all email programmes look at the (web-safe) period
at the end of the string and think of it as a full stop to end the
sentence!  This means that following the link - while appearing to work
correctly - ends in a 'no results page'.  Compare the results for the
example above with the examples below:

http://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/items-by-author?author=Dantas%2C+A&2e, or
http://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/items-by-author?author=Dantas%2C+A.& 

In the examples above, I've substituted the hex value '&2e' for the
period, or by simply adding a '&' to the end (thanks Conal).  However,
I'd much prefer a more permanent fix - so that the urls that are
generated can be easily copied and pasted into email by authors
themselves, without modification.

Has anyone noticed this problem, and managed to resolve it
satisfactorily?

Cheers,

Grant.

Grant Barrie
Institutional Repository Coordinator
University of Canterbury Library
Christchurch, New Zealand
Tel. +64 364 2987 x8711
http://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/