why use IRIs?

<hat type='individual'/>

I've been thinking about IRIs, and I'm wondering: why would a protocol
"upgrade" from URIs to IRIs? (If it really is an "upgrade" -- a topic
for another time.)

Consider HTTP. It has always used URIs for retrieving documents and
linking and such. Why would it change to use IRIs? Section 1.2 of
3987bis describes some necessary conditions for such a change, but
doesn't really motivate why the HTTP community would want to do so. Yes,
there is text in Section 1.1 about representing the words of natural
languages, but URIs can be used to represent those words right now. I
grant that the current mechanism for such representation isn't pretty,
but do the addressing elements of a protocol like HTTP need to be
pretty, or can we simply depend on the presentation software (e.g., web
browsers) to make things look nice for the user? (Certainly we do that
with structural elements like the HTML document format, why not also
with addressing elements like URIs?) I realize that these questions get
back to the matter of "protocol element" vs. "presentation", but I guess
what I'm saying is that I don't yet think we've really explained why we
need to make IRIs a first-class protocol element (or why a given
protocol would want to make the switch from URI-only to IRI).

Furthermore, 3987bis doesn't really explain what would be involved in
the change from URI-only to IRI in any given protocol. I suppose spec
writers in a technology community like HTTP would need to figure it out,
but IMHO some guidelines would be helpful.

Peter

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

Received on Thursday, 21 June 2012 18:29:13 UTC