Re: Terminology: fragment identifier part of an URI?

On 15 April 2010 04:03, Sami Vaarala <sami.vaarala@codebay.fi> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> A minor terminology nit:
>
> The current draft (http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-media-frags-20100413/)
> states in Section 2.1 that:
>
>    According to RFC 3986, URIs that contain a fragment are actually not
>    URIs, but URI references relative to the namespace of another URI.
>
> Based on my reading RFC 3986, this seems incorrect.
>
> RFC 3986, Section 3:
>
>    URI           = scheme ":" hier-part [ "?" query ] [ "#" fragment ]
>
> Section 3 also gives an "example URI":
>
>    foo://example.com:8042/over/there?name=ferret#nose
>
> The "URI" production refers to the generix syntax for a URI.  The
> "absolute-URI" production does not include a fragment identifier, but
> is not intended to be the only URI format.  RFC 3986, Section 4.3:
>
>   Some protocol elements allow only the absolute form of a URI without
>   a fragment identifier.  For example, defining a base URI for later
>   use by relative references calls for an absolute-URI syntax rule that
>   does not allow a fragment.
>
>      absolute-URI  = scheme ":" hier-part [ "?" query ]
>
> This also implies that absolute-URIs are only a subset of all URIs.

I agree. The simplest correction would be to replace "are actually not
URIs" with "are not absolute URIs".

The rest of the sentence, "but URI references relative to the
namespace of another URI" doesn't sound quite right either, at least
without some reference to what kind of namespaces URIs (or should that
be absolute URIs?) specify. Perhaps it would be clearer to simply say
"URIs that contain a fragment are not absolute URIs, but are URIs
containing a fragment identifier." ;-)

cheers,

Conrad.

Received on Wednesday, 14 April 2010 23:21:56 UTC