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

On 03.05.2011 02:42, Adam Barth wrote:
> ...
>> Authors have been using plain old ASCII references to URIs for
>> longer than the Web has been documented.  We expect them to
>> still work.  Likewise for references that are in the document
>> encoding but only use the subset of characters that are found
>> in ASCII.  URIs are defined in terms of characters, not octets,
>> so the transcoding I am referring to is the removal of whitespace,
>> pct-encoding of non-unreserved characters, etc.  A reference that
>> is already in URI form does not need to be transcoded.
>
> You're missing the constraint that browser vendors aren't going to
> change their implementations to align with this dream.  Our choice is
> between having the specification reflect that reality or having the
> spec tell a lie.
> ...

So if we observe four different UA behaviors (like in <base> data URI 
case), we do... what?

Not have a spec, because it would be a lie?

Received on Tuesday, 3 May 2011 05:51:34 UTC