Safety

> I'd like to 
> know more intricate knowlege about all this and exactly what the limits and 
> capabillities of it are. Thank you.

A major consideration is that link resolution should be safe, i.e. has
no side effects.  Opening up an AIM message window is safe, but sending
a message isn't.  You don't want identifiers to do that because you want
to allow other people, search engines, etc..  to resolve the links
without fear of sending some poor user 10,000 AIM messages.

This is why the HTTP URI scheme associates link resolution with the GET
method, which is safe.  The FTP URI scheme also has this property, as
it's bound to the FTP RETR method.  It appears that the AIM URI scheme
isn't as well behaved.

MB

Received on Tuesday, 13 November 2001 16:47:08 UTC