Re: The UR* scheme registry, Citing URL/URI specs

On Fri, 24 Oct 1997, Dan Connolly wrote:

> Keith Moore wrote:

> > This discussion reminds me of the discussion about the use
> > of the term "charset".  I18N experts want to use different
> > terms: "character set", "character encoding scheme", and so
> > forth, because they're very concerned about the differences
> > between these.  MIME has its own notion of "charset"
> > which isn't quite either of the above.  Most people can
> > use terms "charset" or "character set" without needing
> > or caring about such precision, and without being misunderstood.
> > (unless they're talking to an expert...)

I'm glad Dan took that up. I can add a few things:

- The term "charset" is okay, because it is used by MIME
	software rather consistently, and cannot directly
	be misunderstood.

- The term "character set", the way it is used in some MIME
	specifications, is highly misleading. If most people
	use it without being misunderstood, then that's mostly
	due to the fact that they just transfer the mistunderstanding
	among themselves, and in that sense understand each
	other quite well :-).


> So if the URL/URN distinction is that way, please, PLEASE
> show me! Please give an example where the use of the
> term URN vs URL vs URI in the HTML, HTTP, XML, or RDF
> specs will break things. (I'm talking about the specs
> that *use* UR*s, not the specs that define them.)

As many have shown, the way Tim thought the specs were broken
wasn't an issue. Well, I had told him before on another list.

I don't think that this applies to all specs that *use*
UR*s, as there seem to be some operations that you can
do with URNs that you can't do with URLs and vice versa.
But as long as the operation is just "get me this thing",
which is the case at least for HTML and XML, then we
are on the safe side.


Regards,	Martin.

Received on Saturday, 25 October 1997 14:31:41 UTC