- From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
- Date: Sun, 22 Jan 1995 12:56:35 PST
- To: fielding@avron.ics.uci.edu
- Cc: uri@bunyip.com
The reason for putting 'establishing a base' in an appendix is that it isn't exhaustive. It doesn't define how to establish the base URL for all situations, nor can it. What's there now is a set of examples; some of them correspond to well-established practice (like the base for things transported by http, while others are things that you've made up while writing this document (e.g., establishing a base for multipart mail messages). I don't believe that your assertion "The method of establishing a base must be part of the standard" holds up. You assert it, but you don't justify it. In any case, even it if must be part of 'a' standard, it isn't clear that it must be part of *this* standard, which defines the syntax and semantics of relative URLs. >>> gopher Gopher and Gopher+ Protocols >>> news USENET news >>> nntp USENET news using NNTP access >>> prospero Prospero Directory Service >>> wais Wide Area Information Servers Protocol >> >> >> I don't think news and nntp belong in there, do they? >Yes. There is no reason why they can't use relative URLs when listing >the available groups and/or articles. Two things: most importantly, the defined syntax for news and nntp URLs don't include any semantics for "/". At best, you're left saying that a raw "<message-id>" is a relative URL to a "news:<message-id>" URL. The syntax for available groups doesn't allow you to say that applying ".." as a relative URL to "news:alt.binaries.parsers" would get you "news:alt.binaries". And using "../3" in "nntp://news.org:119/alt.binaries/12" doesn't seem particularly useful. I hadn't really gone over your BNF, but I'm puzzled how: ! absoluteURL = generic-RL | ( scheme ":" *( uchar | reserved ) ) + generic-RL = scheme ":" [ relativeURL ] + leads one to allow a relative URL as a kind of absoluteURL.
Received on Sunday, 22 January 1995 15:57:00 UTC