Let me show the form and script then describe the behavior. I'm hoping someone will have experience with this and hopefully a solution.

Here's the form: 

<html>
<body>
<a href="/~newbie/cgi-bin/getpdf2.pl">Click Here for Test 1</a><p>
<FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="/~newbie/cgi-bin/getpdf2.pl">
<INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT" VALUE=" Click here for test 2 ">
</FORM>
<p>
<FORM METHOD="GET" ACTION="/~newbie/cgi-bin/getpdf2.pl">
<INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT" VALUE=" Click here for test 3 ">
</FORM>
</body>
</html>

[download]
Here's the script: 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

open(PAGE, "</home/username/pdf/ho99-6a.pdf");

print "Content-type: application/pdf\n\n";

my($buffer);
while (sysread(PAGE,$buffer,2048)) {
    syswrite(STDOUT,$buffer,length($buffer));
}
close(PAGE);
exit;

[download]
When running Netscape 4.76 and IE5 each of the form options work as well as the hotlink.

When running Netscape 6 the hotlink and the GET method work but the POST does not.

When running IE 5.5 the hotlink and GET always work and sometimes the POST method works (but not always).

The clue that it's working is the pdf file is loaded and presented for viewing.

The clue that it isn't working is the Adobe plugin is activated but the display is blank.

I find this very bizarre. The best I can figure is that Netscape 6 is somehow handling the caching of pages fetched by GET differently than pages fetched as a response to a POST. As you can see in the script there aren't a lot of moving parts to go haywire.

Is there perhaps a header option which will force the browsers to behave the same when receiving a page from GET and POST?

Thanks in advance.
Claude

In reply to Odd difference between by Xxaxx

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