Re: [whatwg/url] It's not immediately clear that "URL syntax" and "URL parser" conflict (#118)

On Wed, 2016-05-11 at 11:25 -0700, sleevi wrote:
> @JohnMHarrisJr I appreciate your enthusiasm, but please keep in mind:
> This Standard reflects the way the world is, not the way we want it
> to be. As @magcius mentioned, it's important to capture how the world
> actually is - and where it's diverged from the idealistic view of the
> RFCs - so that we can accurately know the bugs, quirks, and
> behaviours that exist.
> Arguing on ideological purity ("It shouldn't be in the spec")
> accomplishes nothing, serves nothing, because at the end of the day,
> code is running today that accepts it, servers depend on that/exploit
> that, and the Standard accurately reflects that.
> I don't think there's opposition to making a "better world, tomorrow"
> - and @domenic comment in #118 (comment) suggests how we can go about
> making that world. But the Standard exists to reflect what code today
> is doing - warts and all - so that there's consistency - warts and
> all. Once we have consistency, we can also make a concerted,
> collaborative effort to move to the world we want.
> I think you're confusing the documenting the state of the world as
> promoting it, and that's not the case, no more than a study of
> controversial topics (say, a study of racism, or police violence, or
> global warming) should be seen as promoting/endorsing it. The
> Standard is not saying it's good - it's saying "This is the world we
> live in, and this is how to work within that world today" - and once
> we understand how bad it is, we can collaborate to make it better.
> And #118 (comment) captures how we can do that, with browsers in
> particular having a significant influence not because of any innate
> primacy/superiority, but simply because they're the way most users
> will interact with the content, and the first a nd only means that
> authors will know something works or doesn't work.

So this is not a "Standard", this is simply documentation of what is
already done? Surely you see that that is an issue, and that there is
no sense in calling this a standard? Saying that "This is the world we
live in" is much different from saying "this is how to work within that
world today." Browsers are not the "first a nd only means that authors
will know something works or doesn't work.", in fact you could say the
opposite. Yes, you know that those browsers following this will accept
whatever URL is in question, but not how other software will deal with
this issue. Instead of relying on that, they could learn how to
properly format URLs so that this nonsense isn't done. It would be
trivial to parse URLs on the server side so that when URLs are used,
they are always exactly what the server wants, and not what your
browser says it probably is. That is where standards come into play,
and why this shouldn't be based on what browsers are doing at all, if
it is to be called a "Standard".


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