Proposal: defer converge with the URL standard to a later release of HTML

While Plan "A" would remain to identify a link that would satisfy the 
reference for [URL] in the existing Proposed Recommendation, there are 
concerns about the technical stability[1] of any current snapshot based 
on the WHATWG URL Standard (this would include any potential snapshot 
hosted by the W3C).  As such, it makes sense to explore a plan "B".

Note: the plan outlined below would likely require a return to Last all, 
and therefore would likely result in final Recommendation being 
published in February.

---

Here are the current references to [URL] in the Proposed Recommendation.

> The following terms are defined in the URL standard: [URL]

Replace with a reference to [RFC3986] and [RFC3987]; for each term, map 
to [RFC3986] and/or [RFC3987]

> A URL is a valid URL if it conforms to the authoring conformance
> requirements in the URL standard. [URL]

Defer to later release (i.e., drop from HTML 5.0)

> The a element also supports the URLUtils interface. [URL]

Defer to later release (i.e., drop from HTML 5.0)

> The format of the fragment identifier depends on the MIME type of the
> media resource. [RFC2046] [URL]

Replace with a reference to [RFC3986] and/or [RFC3987]

> The area element also supports the URLUtils interface. [URL]

Defer to later release (i.e., drop from HTML 5.0)

> ... replace the first occurrence of "%%%%" in action with the resulting
> doubly-escaped string. [URL]

Replace with a reference to [RFC3986] and/or [RFC3987]

> ... replace the first occurrence of "%%" in action with the resulting
> escaped string. [URL]

Replace with a reference to [RFC3986] and/or [RFC3987]

> ... are not characters in the URL default encode set. [URL]

Define that set in the HTML 5.0 standard itself.  Here's the relevant 
text from the URL standard:

The default encode set is the simple encode set and code points U+0020, 
'"', "#", "<", ">", "?", and "`".

The simple encode set are all code points less than U+0020 (i.e. 
excluding U+0020) and all code points greater than U+007E.

> The Location interface also supports the URLUtils interface. [URL]

Defer to later release (i.e., drop from HTML 5.0)

> Relative URLs must be given relative to the manifest's own URL. All URLs
> in the manifest must have the same scheme as the manifest itself (either
> explicitly or implicitly, through the use of relative URLs). [URL]

Replace with a reference to [RFC3986] and/or [RFC3987]

---

Feedback welcome.  In particular, identification of any references I 
missed, identification of a better replacement than the one I outlined 
above, or a technical reason why this alternative wouldn't work.

- Sam Ruby

[1] http://w3c.github.io/test-results/url/less-than-2.html

Received on Friday, 26 September 2014 13:32:14 UTC