RE: Change definition of URL to normatively reference IRI specification using a well-defined interface

On Thu, 8 Apr 2010, Larry Masinter wrote:
> 
> > If we can get agreement to provide an interface roughly similar to 
> > what Ian proposed
> 
> Honestly, I thought the IRIBIS document actually had what is being asked 
> for here.

By "interface" what I meant was some text equivalent to defining a 
function, something like:

   "When a specification says that a user agent is to *parse an address*, 
   given a string INPUT, it must run the following steps, which return a 
   failure/success condition and a set of components:

    ...

   When a specification says that a user agent is to *resolve an address", 
   given a string INPUT, a second string BASE, and a character encoding 
   ENCODING, it must run the following steps, which return a failure/ 
   success condition and a string:

    ..."

This gives a completely unambiguous and clear way to invoke the algorithms 
described in the spec, along with RFC2119-level clarity regarding what 
such invokations imply for the user agent.

If this already exists in the IRIbis draft, then that's great news; I 
couldn't find it when I looked, but it's a long draft so I could have 
missed it, or I could have been looking at the wrong draft. I was looking 
at this document:

   http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-duerst-iri-bis-07#section-7.2

If and interface already exists, then all I need to know is what terms to 
use to invoke the algorithms referenced in the change proposal and then I 
can update the HTML5 spec and that can resolve the HTMLWG issue.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 8 April 2010 08:43:55 UTC