Re: Browser bars, etc.

<hat type='individual'/>

On 7/10/12 1:16 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
> 
> --On Monday, July 09, 2012 20:03 +0000 Dave Thaler
> <dthaler@microsoft.com> wrote:

<snip/>

>>   That address bar today
>> can often contain IRIs, which are more readable than URIs.
> 
> I'll agree with "more readable" but note that there seems to be
> an industry trend to be toward more and more complex URIs which
> are usefully accessible only from favorites/bookmarks, imported
> references, and search mechanisms of some flavor.  Discussions
> in the IETF may lead to reinforcing that trend (e.g., proposals
> to incorporate hashes instead of user names and of signed URIs).
> If one assumes a URL that goes on for several lines, with most
> of the relevant tail components present, possibly embedding
> another URL, multiple query components, and so on, then
> readability is an unreasonable expectation whether the abstract
> text is ASCII or not.  Even if it is not, the marginal
> percentage readability improvement from IRIs is likely to be
> miniscule.

It seems to me that a browser does not need to present the "raw" URI in
the address bar, and ought to display hex-encoded characters there in a
user-friendly manner. So I don't think that IRI vs. URI is all that
relevant for the address bar, whereas it's more relevant for activities
like authoring HTML documents.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

Received on Tuesday, 10 July 2012 18:02:41 UTC