Re: Non-hierarchical base URLs (was Re: draft-abarth-url-01 uploaded)

Hi Roy,

On Apr 27, 2011, at 10:12 PM, Roy T. Fielding wrote:

> As you well know, what HTML5 needs is a definition for parsing
> arbitrary attribute values in document encoding.  Those attribute
> values are not URLs.  They aren't even URI references.  They are
> one or more space-separated or space-ignoring strings in an HTML
> attribute encoding, and each reference needs to be extracted and
> transcoded before the definitions in 3986 are even applicable.

It is fine to call the types of resource identifiers that appear in HTML and other parts of the Web platform (CSS, XHR, SVG, etc) something other than "URL" or "URI". The name does not really matter for interoperability.

> 
> However, for the subset of possible references that do happen
> to match what are called valid URI references by RFC3986, then
> we have already tested consensus and deployed many implementations
> that conform exactly to the results given in RFC3986.  

If these references are something other than URIs, and must be transcoded, why is it important that the subset that happens to look syntactically like a valid URI must be processed without that transcoding step? This implies that the transcoding must be the identity encoding in some cases. Where does that assumption come from?

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Thursday, 28 April 2011 07:29:42 UTC