Re: IDNA and IRI document way forward

I very much agree with Larry. Having definitions with minor differences 
in different places is not a good idea.

LEIRI are not only used widely in XML specs, but are also what was in 
some early Internet-Drafts that led up to RFC 3987.

Also, for both LEIRIs and Hypertext References, they are clearly minor 
variations on IRIs, and they are clearly *tolerated* variations for 
backwards compatibility and continuity rather than recommended best 
practice. Using the "Best Practice" label for either of these would 
detract from the fact that the relevant technologies (a group of XML 
specs, and HTML5, respectively) allow acceptance of these variants, but 
authors/generators/creators should avoid them wherever possible.

There is currently clear advice on avoiding variants outside the IRI 
syntax for LEIRIs, but not yet for Hypertext References. I wrote the 
advice on avoiding variants outside the IRI syntax for LEIRIs, and after 
coming back from vacation (the next three weeks, will have email 
access), I can work on adapting this advice for Hypertext References, too.

Regards,    Martin.

On 2009/07/30 19:06, Larry Masinter wrote:
> I'd like to focus on the technical issues remaining --
> what should we say about "best practice", whether we've
> adequately captured "current browser behavior" before
> taking on the editorial issues around whether this all
> can appear in the IRI document or needs to be split
> out into a BCP etc.
>
> At first glance, the problem we started out with was that
> there were 4-5 different documents with conflicting
> advice, terminology and introductory material, and
> so I'd like to continue working on a combined document
> until we get everything all assembled.
>
> My hope is that the deployment advice is brief enough
> that a single specification can address both the allowed
> syntax and semantics, processing rules, and deployment
> advice.
>
> Larry
> --
> http://larry.masinter.net
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Erik van der Poel [mailto:erikv@google.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 12:39 PM
> To: Martin J. Dürst
> Cc: Larry Masinter; PUBLIC-IRI@W3.ORG; URI; John Klensin (klensin@jck.com); Vint Cerf
> Subject: Re: IDNA and IRI document way forward
>
> Hi all,
>
> First of all, I am glad that this discussion is happening, and
> especially happy to see references to "current browser behavior". :-)
>
> I am a bit concerned about a couple of things in the new IRI bis draft:
>
> http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-duerst-iri-bis-06.txt
>
> There are a couple of new terms in this document: Legacy Extended IRIs
> (LEIRIs) and Hypertext References. The difference between LEIRIs and
> IRIs appears to be whether or not you %-escape certain characters,
> such as Space and Unicode Private Use characters. However, Space is an
> ASCII character, so one would expect this to be more related to URIs,
> which begs the question of why we don't have the term LEURI as well.
>
> Instead of defining new terms like LEIRI and Hypertext References, I
> wonder if it might be better to have Standards Track RFCs on URIs and
> IRIs and a BCP (Best Current Practice) on the contexts in which these
> *RIs occur. The BCP would cover such issues as whether or not to
> %-escape Space and Private Use.
>
> The BCP could also cover HTML-specific issues such as the character
> encoding of the query part (after the question mark), or the
> HTML-specific material could be moved back to W3C.
>
> Erik


-- 
#-# Martin J. Dürst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp

Received on Thursday, 30 July 2009 11:00:48 UTC