``canonical'' root URL of a server?

What is the significance of including the word ``canonical'' in the following
sentence in draft-ietf-http-authentication-01 section 1.2?  The cited section
of the HTTP/1.1 draft defines the "root" URL of a server, but the word
canonical doesn't appear there.  Is this an editorial bug in one spec or the
other?

``The realm value (case-sensitive), in combination with the canonical root URL
(see section 5.1.2 of [2]) of the server being accessed, defines the protection
space.''

Received on Friday, 3 April 1998 07:35:20 UTC