HTTPBis and URI scheme registration for http:

AWWSW ACTION-19 (in part):

We might (or might not) want to review this:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p1-messaging-07#section-2.1.1

dated July 13, 2009.

   The "http" scheme is used to locate network resources via the HTTP
   protocol.

     http-URI = "http:" "//" authority path-abempty [ "?" query ]

   If the port is empty or not given, port 80 is assumed.  The semantics
   are that the identified resource is located at the server listening
   for TCP connections on that port of that host, and the request-target
   for the resource is path-absolute (Section 5.1.2).  The use of IP
   addresses in URLs SHOULD be avoided whenever possible (see
   [RFC1900]).  If the path-absolute is not present in the URL, it MUST
   be given as "/" when used as a request-target for a resource
   (Section 5.1.2).  If a proxy receives a host name which is not a
   fully qualified domain name, it MAY add its domain to the host name
   it received.  If a proxy receives a fully qualified domain name, the
   proxy MUST NOT change the host name.

The question is, should this be changed in any way, given that people
have listened to the RDF media type registration and httpRange-14 and
are now using http: URIs to refer to things that are not network
resources? Is the current text either untrue or confusing? Maybe no
change is called for.

It had been suggested to change "is used" to "may be used", and this
precipitated a storm.

Received on Monday, 31 August 2009 16:03:01 UTC