- From: Roy T. Fielding <fielding@avron.ICS.UCI.EDU>
- Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1995 21:08:05 -0800
- To: Harald.T.Alvestrand@uninett.no
- Cc: uri@bunyip.com, klensin@mail1.reston.mci.net
> Re the statement
>
>> <li> Are there ways of using pieces of the information inside it
>> that implementations are supposed to get right?
>
> I was thinking of the case where someone comes up with a scheme like
>
> foobarlibrary:/stack=3/shelf=5/pos=3cm/librarian=jones/
>
> where the meaning would be "look in stack 3, shelf 5, 3 cm from the left,
> and if it isn't there, call for Jones".
> An application would then be expected to pick out the components
> /stack=3/shelf=5/pos=3cm/ and /librarian=jones/, and use each piece in
> one part of the foobarlibrary access method.
> (Note: The example was chosen for its silliness!)
Uh, yeah, but I get it now -- thanks.
> If something is designed to be broken into pieces, it should document
> what those pieces are, why it should be broken in this way, and why the
> breaks aren't where 1808 says that they usually should be.
That's much better.
> The language of the sentence is bad, but I don't want to make it much longer?
> does anyone have alternative language here?
Actually, I like the paragraph just above you -- nice and succinct, yet
tells people what they need to think about.
I've thought of one more:
If the URI represents a hierarchy, the hierarchical parts should be
represented top-down from left to right unless the opposite choice
is required for historical reasons. This allows a URI prefix to be
used for various operations involving identifiers.
...Roy T. Fielding
Department of Information & Computer Science (fielding@ics.uci.edu)
University of California, Irvine, CA 92717-3425 fax:+1(714)824-4056
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/
Received on Friday, 1 December 1995 00:09:57 UTC