Re: [whatwg/url] Provide a succinct grammar for valid URL strings (#479)

> Any updates on this?

@aucampia, it is a solved problem. The differences between whatwg URL and IRI are  minor, but they are very subtle and tricky to get right. Feel free to send me a message directly if you are interested. 

Changes to the Whatwg standard are unlikely to be made because the differences cannot be harmoniously incorporated without, essentially rewriting it. 

Specifically, at its very inception there has been a deliberate decision to ignore some solid advice by David Sheets (this was in 2012) and base the standard on a single precomposed parse-resolve-and-normalise algorithm, rather than more carefully separating the syntactic and semantic concerns.

Part of that decision, and the frustrations around these issues can be seen as an outflow of the  cultural schism between the IETF and the W3C at the time and the WHATWG, where the former traditionally have taken a more academic approach with a stronger focus on cs theory and the latter has taken a more pragmatic and post-modern approach which (in the case of html, I believe) was sorely needed to break out of an impasse.

Of course both approaches are valuable and the only way to move on from here is to reintegrate them. In contrast, what is happening now is that the Whatwg is increasingly crippling itself by a distaste for anything and anyone that reminds them of the more formal or theoretic. A formal grammar, of course is one of those things :D

In addition, if you appear to have any such inclination, you are not likely to be well received here, no matter the effort you put in to try and remain constructive. 

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