Re: iDNR, an alternative name resolution protocol

Larry,

The draft defines URI as "... both for transmission in network protocols and
representation in spoken and written human communication". However, it seems
that the URI defined for network protocol may have different set of
requirements from URI targeted for human communication. URI defined for
network protocol doesn't need to be concerned with "user friendly" as much
as URI defined for human comsumption. And I think URI defined human
communication should not require "everyone in the world be able to read or
enter", because no single language is "friendly" to everyone in the world.

For any particular URI scheme defined for a specific network protocol (e.g.
http), it makes it simpler to have a uniform encoding. However, if URI is
defined as the guideline for every network protocol to be integrated with
web browser, it doesn't seem practical to enforce any specific encoding.
Different URI schemes may map to different network protocols, and different
protocols may have their very own encoding (already) defined. In fact, most
URI scheme specific Resolver (telnet, ftp, ldap, ...) treats its URI as
"human entered" and converts it into the protocol encoding before sending
out the request.


These said, it seems more appropriate to define URI "for representation in
spoken and written human communication" ONLY. And the URI encoding should be
defined as scheme specific. Some URI schemes (e.g. "http:") may require a
single encoding. While other URI schemes (e.g. "hld:") would allow any
native encoding to be used. The conversion from the human entered URI to the
network protocol is handled by the scheme specific Resolver.


Regards,
Sam
ssun@cnri.reston.va.us



-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
To: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <Harald.Alvestrand@maxware.no>; Jon Davis
<jdavis@inetinit.org>; ietf@odin.ietf.org <ietf@odin.ietf.org>
Cc: URI distribution list <uri@Bunyip.Com>
Date: Tuesday, September 01, 1998 1:01 AM
Subject: RE: iDNR, an alternative name resolution protocol


>Martin Duerst and I have been working on a revised version of
>'draft-masinter-url-i18n', which lays out some of the issues around
>introducing more 'Human Friendly' URIs, at least for humans who
>speak/write languages other than English.
>
>I submitted a revision to Internet-Drafts, but there've been several
>revisions since; I suggest you fetch it from:
>
> ftp://ftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/masinter/draft-masinter-url-i18n-03.txt
>
>The issues of introducing spaces other ASCII excluded characters within
>a URI are not significantly different from those surrounding the
>introduction of non-ASCII characters.
>
>I suggest 'uri@bunyip.com' as the mailing list most appropriate for
>this discussion.
>
>Larry
>--
>http://www.parc.xerox.com/masinter
>

Received on Tuesday, 1 September 1998 16:40:37 UTC