Re: "semantics" of URI

Larry Masinter wrote:

> I think this is OK, although I'm uneasy about "does not".
> Is it "will not", "should not", "must not"? Are we
> establishing a conformance requirement, describing current
> deployed software? In no cases does escaping unreserved
> characters change the resource identified in all of the
> deployed software in the world? 

In my experience pretty well all serious software tends do do the right 
thing.  Having said that...

> I offer the following rewrite:
> 
>    Escaping unreserved characters in a URI should not change
>    what resource is identified.  However, escaping characters
>    may change the result of some URI comparisons (section 6),
>    potentially leading to incorrect or inefficient behavior.
>    Therefore, unreserved characters should not be escaped
>    unnecessarily.

I like this.

-- 
Cheers, Tim Bray
         (ongoing fragmented essay: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/)

Received on Sunday, 8 June 2003 13:11:47 UTC