IRIs and XLink/XPointer spec

Dear XLink/XPointer specialists,

As the authors of the IRI spec
(http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-duerst-iri-02.txt)
for the I18N WG, we need your input.

As you may remember, XLink uses what's now called IRIs in the
xlink:href attribute. XPointer is also defined in a way that
makes it easy to interact with IRIs.

IRIs were specified to fit together well with XPointer.
In particular, XPointer was the main reason that IRIs currently
not only allow URI characters and non-ASCII characters, but also
some ASCII characters that are excluded in URIs, such as
<, >, {, }, |, \, ^, `, and in particular SPACE. This makes it
very easy to use XPointers directly in IRIs, without too much
escaping.

However, I have seen various comments recently that including
space and these other characters was going too far. These
comments have come both publicly, on www-international@w3.org,
where the IRI draft is discussed, and also privately.

See e.g.:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2002Dec/0058.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2002Dec/0000.html

I would like to invite you to www-international@w3.org (a publicly
archived list, crossposted) to express your input on why
IRIs should include the above characters (<, >, {, }, |, \, ^, `,
and SPACE), or to tell us that you would be fine with a change
back to excluding these characters.


With kind regards,     Martin.

Received on Thursday, 5 December 2002 16:46:01 UTC