Re: non-authoritative syntaxes for fragment identifiers

On Mon, 2004-09-20 at 03:23, Roy T.Fielding wrote:
> On Sep 2, 2004, at 8:31 PM, Myriam Amielh wrote:
> > The issue I would like to submit here is the following: Does the use
> > of a non-authoritative fragment identifier syntax make a URI invalid?
> > In relation to this problem, I have two observations for the Last Call
> > on AWWW:
> >
> >  1) Paragraph 4 of clause 3.3[.1] specifies:
> >
> >  As with any URI, use of a fragment identifier component does not
> > imply that a retrieval action will take place. A URI with a fragment
> > identifier may be used to refer to the secondary resource without
> > any implication that the primary resource is accessible or will ever
> > be accessed. One may compare URIs with fragment identifiers without a
> > retrieval action. *Parties that draw conclusions about the 
> > interpretation
> > of a fragment identifier based solely on a syntactic analysis of all
> > or part of a URI do so at their own risk; such interpretations are
> > not authoritative because they are not licensed by specification*.
> 
> Hmm, that is very awkward.  I believe that sentence and the one before
> it ("One may compare ...") are leftovers from a prior edit and should
> be deleted.  The first two sentences are from rfc2396bis.

Recall that the last sentence was included to address this question
from David Orchard (cf. 21 July 2003 minutes [1]):

  "Can spec designers constrain the format of URIs to contain metadata 
   in the path component of a URI?"

As I recall, we answered "They can do what they want, but they do so at
their own risk" and this was the sentence that captured that.

 _ Ian

[1] http://www.w3.org/2003/07/21-tag-summary.html

-- 
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                     +1 718 260-9447