Re: Mailto misnamed not misdesigned (Was: Hyperlinks depend on GET (was: Re: REST and the Web))

At 15:36 02/04/01 -0500, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:

>The mailto:  schema name was badly chosen, but the concept is
>sound as originally defined.  It was intended simply to be a space
>in which to put all the internet email addresses, which are called
>mailboxes.  A mailbox is an abstract thing, related to email messages
>by (for example)  To: From: and Cc: feilds but also used in many
>other situations.  It also normally has a relationship with the social
>entity
>-- typically a person or group --which owns it.
>
>The unfortunate choice of name "mailto", my fault,  has lead browser
>designers to think that it specifies an action. It is supposed to specifiy
>an address. A perfectly reasonable representation on a user's screen
>would be a compilation of links to messages sent to or from that
>address (which the user knows about)

Would be very useful to have such a functionality,
with or without an URI.


>and also a represenattion
>with photo, name, and so on, of the person with whom the  mailbox
>is associated, and a button "compose mail to this person".
>
>Software which launches an email composition window is
>relatively boring -- but it is of course also the eaiest thing to do.

And very helpful in many cases.


>Agreed.  "mailto"  does *not* express behaviour -- it just sounds as though
>it does.

As currently used (not as originally intended), it does
express behavior. What about defining a new one
(e.g. mailadress: or so) for the original purpose?

Regards,   Martin.

Received on Tuesday, 2 April 2002 21:14:00 UTC