Re: ACTION-103 Follow up on the about: scheme Registration

Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> ACTION-103 in relation to the about: URI scheme registration is
> currently assigned to me and due today. I've sent feedback to Joseph
> about the current draft, which needs a number of changes. However, I
> haven't heard back yet. So I will change the due date for this action to
> next week, when I will hopefully have more to report on the issue.

Joseph responded today, having made most of the changes I suggested to 
him.  The last remaining issue was to do with fixing up section 5 for 
defining how to resolve about URIs and reserving about:blank.

The current editor's draft is here.

http://github.com/josephholsten/about-uri-scheme/blob/master/draft-holsten-about-uri-scheme-03.txt

The revised text I've suggested for section 5 is as follows:

---
5.  Resolving "about" URIs

    A reserved "about" URI is one that is defined by a specification for
    a specific purpose, which MAY also be defined to be resolvable.

    An unreserved "about" URI is any other "about" URI that is not
    defined by a specification for a specific purpose, but which may be
    recognised by an application.

    An unrecognised "about" URI is an "about" URI that is not recognised
    by an application.

5.1 Reserved "about" URIs

    The "about" URI with the segment equal to "blank" and no query
    component is reserved by this specification.  i.e. about:blank

    Applications resolving the URI "about:blank" MUST return a resource
    of zero length, containing no data, with the media type "text/html"
    and the character encoding "UTF-8".

    Note: If a query component is provided with about:blank, such as
    "about:blank?" or "about:blank?foo", then the URI is not considered
    to be reserved by this specification.

    Other specifications MAY reserve additional "about" URIs.
    Applications attempting to resolve reserved "about" URIs that are
    not defined to be resolvable, MAY treat such URIs as being
    unreserved.

5.2 Unreserved "about" URIs

    Applications are free to resolve any unreserved "about" URI to any
    resource, either internal or external, or redirect to an alternative
    URI.  Applications must resolve reserved "about" URIs that defined
    to be resolvable, in the way defined.

    As "about" URIs are designed to be internal to each application,
    there is no expectation of any unreserved URI returning the same
    resource among different applications.  However, it is worth
    noting that some conventions have arisen for providing particular
    functionality via common "about" URIs.

5.3 Unrecognised "about" URIs

    Applications SHOULD resolve unrecognised URIs in the same way as
    about:blank.

5.4 Examples
...
---

The effect of this will be that HTML5 should define about:legacy-compat 
as a reserved, though unresolvable, about URI.

Pending the inclusion of the above text, I believe the draft will be 
ready for resubmission to the IETF, and then proceeding with the scheme 
registration.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/

Received on Friday, 18 September 2009 13:13:04 UTC