Re: URL-Reference / "empty URL" question

On Wed, 14 May 1997, Martin J. Duerst wrote:
> On Wed, 14 May 1997, Larry Masinter wrote:
> 
> >   "the copy of the content that is being viewed now"
> > 
> > Let's give it its own URL scheme
> >    "this:"
> > where the scheme-specific part of "this:" is
> > empty.
> 
> Bright idea!
> 
> I'm not sure, but I seem to detect in some of the comments
> in this thread a question as to why there could be a need
> to move inside a document without every refetching it (from
> the cache or wherever). 

I don't detect such a question, the question is just when does (or should)
a URL reference have that meaning and when not.  (Or, as Roy's reply seems
to indicate, can it be completely left to the choice of the client
implementation, for URL references where the URL is non-empty.)

> But I think it goes without saying
> that something like this is needed, and if it didn't
> exist (currently as a special convention for URL references
> of the form "#blarg"), somebody would come along and
> invent it :-).

But note that for a *collection of documents* with cross references,
which are stored as a number of separate URLs and become a number of
separate files when downloaded, no special convention like this exists,
and nobody has come along and invented it AFAIK.

(Relative URLs may or may not work in this case. In general they will
not work if some of them pointed to documents at the original location
which are not included within the downloaded set.)

     Klaus

Received on Wednesday, 14 May 1997 15:40:26 UTC