RE: ISSUE-81 (resource vs representation)

Folks, some of this discussion isn't too helpful.

The serious technical issue is that what HTML5 calls a "URL" 
allows (MAY) recommends (SHOULD) or mandates (MUST) doesn't
match syntactically or semantically what other Internet
applications call variously URLs, URIs, IRIs, LEIRIs, etc.,
either syntactically or semantically, and that the mismatch
in semantics will cause interoperability problems when 
copying or moving or translating between web applications
and the other applications.

Fixing this is hard; I think the only direction that
makes sense to me is to mandate that compliant producers
of URLs (or whatever they're called) be more conservative
than what browsers currently accept.

In some cases, the mismatch can be accomplished by saying
that browsers do "pre-processing", e.g., strip off leading
and trailing spaces.

I'm still working on producing a new version of a
document that captures that sense (on
http://larry.masinter.net/iribis-hack.html), but
the next version I was hoping to have ready by tomorrow
(Monday) might take a little longer, now estimated
Tuesday.

Once we've really resolved the technical interoperability
issue of how to get the systems to work together, then
deciding what these things are named or called or described
can be much more easily resolved.  I took a cut at that
in my current IRIBIS draft, but I think I can do better.

Of course, the provocative style of the HTML5 document 
and its irreverence toward existing other technical standards
is annoying, but we should all be used to that by now and 
just get over it, at least until resolve the technical 
incompatibility issues.

> If you don't want to standardize
> within the constraints of the Web, then feel free to change the
> name of the specification to something else.

Roy, this isn't helpful at all, since the working group
isn't chartered to produce "something else."

http://www.w3.org/2007/03/HTML-WG-charter

calls for " This group will maintain and produce
   incremental revisions to the HTML specification"

with a deliverable of 

"A language evolved from HTML4"

Any divergence from that is a bug which needs to be 
fixed (unless the working group is rechartered, I 
suppose).

Larry

Received on Monday, 28 September 2009 02:17:00 UTC