Re: Globalizing URIs

I think that we may have gotten a bit overexcited about "standards" here.
There is nothing in the RFC1738 that says that the stuff to the right of
the domain name is a file name, or that if it has "/" characters in it,
that there is a hierarcy. Those has become the way folks do things, but it
doesn't have to be that way.

I suggest that those most interested in making the stuff to the right of
the domain name more readable simply propose a good way to do it and
publicize it. It doesn't have to be an IETF standard: if everyone on the
server side is doing it, the clients will soon follow. One of the original
suggestions (adding a [XYZ] to the end of the the URL) sounds OK to me, as
does putting the [XYZ] after the first / after the domain name. There will
be heavy technical problems with either of these for many existing servers
of many protocols, but they can be gotten around if the market demands it.

--Paul Hoffman
--Proper Publishing

Received on Thursday, 10 August 1995 12:18:30 UTC