Re: URL Spec WorkMode (was: PSA: Sam Ruby is co-Editor of URL spec)

Just in case I haven't formally said this elsewhere:

My personal feeling is that it's probably better to stay away from
speccing the behavior of file:// URLs.

There's very little incentive for browsers to align on how to handle
file:// handling. The complexities of different file system behaviors
on different platforms and different file system backends makes doing
comprehensive regression testing painful. And the value is pretty low
because there's almost no browser content that uses absolute file://
URLs.

I'm not sure if non-browser URL consuming software has different
incentives. Most software that loads resources from the local file
system use file paths, rather than file:// URLs. Though I'm sure there
are exceptions.

And it seems like file:// URLs add a significant chunk of complexity
to the spec. Complexity which might be for naught if implementations
don't implement them.

/ Jonas



On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 5:17 PM, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net> wrote:
> On 11/18/2014 03:18 PM, Sam Ruby wrote:
>>
>>
>> Meanwhile, I'm working to integrate the following first into the WHATWG
>> version of the spec, and then through the WebApps process:
>>
>> http://intertwingly.net/projects/pegurl/url.html
>
>
> Integration is proceeding, current results can be seen here:
>
> https://specs.webplatform.org/url/webspecs/develop/
>
> It is no longer clear to me what "through the WebApps process" means. In an
> attempt to help define such, I'm making a proposal:
>
> https://github.com/webspecs/url/blob/develop/docs/workmode.md#preface
>
> At this point, I'm looking for general feedback.  I'm particularly
> interested in things I may have missed.  Pull requests welcome!
>
> Once discussion dies down, I'll try go get agreement between the URL
> editors, the WebApps co-chairs and W3C Legal.  If/when that is complete,
> this will go to W3C Management and whatever the WHATWG equivalent would be.
>
> - Sam Ruby
>

Received on Tuesday, 2 December 2014 03:04:22 UTC