Re: Top level .htaccess file

Ah, I had failed to think about PURL doing case insensitivity.. that
would affect its transition - which would also affect top-level
entries (e.g. http://purl.org/PAV should work )

On 15 March 2016 at 13:41, Robert Stuart <robert.j.stuart@ugov.gov> wrote:
> I can understand if this is out of scope. It feels like it should be a
> choice for domains or subdomains instead of a always true or false.
>
> This was/is the behavior of purl.org so that is one of the main things that
> set expectations of my community for the last ~6 years. I don't know if PURL
> was apache based in the back end or not I don't think it was. So the method
> of case insensitive is different from the desire to support it.
>
> I agree that misspellings like l for I are an issue that we have ignored but
> since it's not a change from PURL we don't get flack for it.
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 9:23 AM, Stian Soiland-Reyes
> <soiland-reyes@cs.manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>> I'm not so sure about this..beyond binding us even closer to Apache (while
>> we are discussing a more flexible CSV approach)
>>
>> w3id is about permanent identifiers, not a "nicer URL" service. Most URLs
>> today are lowercase, so why not just assume that? You would also have the
>> potential problem of lc vs Ic which is not covered by your rule
>>
>> On 15 Mar 2016 01:13, "Robert Stuart" <robert.j.stuart@ugov.gov> wrote:
>>>
>>> To better help understand the need my use cases are around giving URLs to
>>> people in briefing decks and verbally. Much less for client systems to be
>>> coded and much more for humans who are bad at remembering case to use.
>>>
>>> I too am not an apache expert. My limited testing locally seemed to say
>>> that the .htaccess file was not hit if there was a valid path that it could
>>> traverse instead. That does mean it would be hit for all "bad" w3id.org/xxx
>>> URLs where xxx does not exist in that exact case.
>>>
>>> For humans messing up case it would be an extra .htaccess to process but
>>> I would hope that is a trivial load.
>>>
>>> Thanks for your consideration and for standing up this service.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 8:22 PM, David I. Lehn <dil@lehn.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 4:50 PM, Robert Stuart <robert.j.stuart@ugov.gov>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > I would like w3id.org/ic to match case insensitive. I think it could
>>>> > be done
>>>> > with a top level .htaccess file that looked like:
>>>> >
>>>> > ##########################
>>>> > ...
>>>> > RewriteRule ^IC/?(.*)$  ic/$1 [NC]
>>>> > ##########################
>>>> > ...
>>>> > rewrite any case of IC Ic iC to ic
>>>> > not fire on any of the existing directories nor would it fire on ic
>>>> > ...
>>>> > would not fire on a future directory like ice
>>>> > would only fire when there was no directory that matched exactly
>>>> > existing.
>>>> > ...
>>>>
>>>> I'm not sure I understand the reasoning for handling case differences.
>>>> If just one case is used won't clients just fail and get fixed if they
>>>> use the wrong thing?  I would guess that's how most of the semantic
>>>> web identifier use cases work.
>>>>
>>>> I suppose no one knows what to do here.  I don't know what the limits
>>>> are of what this project should support right now.  I'm sure this
>>>> simple rule won't be a problem today, but it just adds something that
>>>> would need to be handled if the server changes technology.  Apache was
>>>> just the quickest means to an end when we started.  Who knows what it
>>>> might evolve into as the service grows.  These issues can be handled
>>>> but it may add complexity if we implement some new non-Apache system.
>>>> Maybe the entire system should just be case insensitive by default?
>>>> Do all the redirects and let the target handle what they want.
>>>>
>>>> I don't know the internals of Apache, but I'm guessing any top level
>>>> rules still have to be checked for every path.  Maybe it's smart
>>>> enough to mostly avoid that.  Not really an issue at the current low
>>>> load but if everyone wants NC rules maybe it matters.
>>>>
>>>> Thoughts anyone?
>>>>
>>>> -dave
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Bob Stuart
>>> SETA Support for ODNI/CIO/IA Division
>>> Specifications Team Co-Lead
>>> Cell: 703-304-5864
>>> AIM: bobStuart
>>> Skype: cmsi-bobstuart
>>> TextPage: 7033045864@txt.att.net
>>> Robert.J.Stuart@ugov.gov
>
>
>
>
> --
> Bob Stuart
> SETA Support for ODNI/CIO/IA Division
> Specifications Team Co-Lead
> Cell: 703-304-5864
> AIM: bobStuart
> Skype: cmsi-bobstuart
> TextPage: 7033045864@txt.att.net
> Robert.J.Stuart@ugov.gov



-- 
Stian Soiland-Reyes, eScience Lab
School of Computer Science
The University of Manchester
http://soiland-reyes.com/stian/work/    http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9842-9718

Received on Wednesday, 16 March 2016 12:55:43 UTC