Re: why use IRIs?

* Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
>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.)

Looking at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/uri/2001Jun/0027.html I
wonder whether you are two days late or one day early with the question,
depending on whether you ignore leap days. The "upgrade" question does
not seem very relevant to me, I would rather ask about new protocols and
go from there. I see no reason why http://björn.höhrmann.de/ should be
an error in any new protocol or format that does not suffer compatibili-
ty problems if it allows non-ASCII literals in "other places".

>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).

URIs are technical debt. If we could wish them away, we would, as having
them and also IRIs as "first-class" protocol elements is very expensive.

How would you like it if URIs could use only 20 of the 26 letters in the
english alphabet and you would have to encode, decode and convert them
all the time, or use awkward transliterations to avoid having to do so?

>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.

You just change specifications and software and content as needed. If
there are problems in doing so, there does not seem to be much that we
could say on how to address those as they would be technology-specific.
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
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Received on Thursday, 21 June 2012 20:01:48 UTC