Re: Excess URI schemes considered harmful

> Implementations which rely on a URI encoding of a media type should not be 
> required to dereference a URI to determine equivalency.  Redirects assume 
> dereferencing.

There's different degrees of equivalency at play here.

It is the case that if two HTTP URIs are equal, that they necessarily identify
the same resource (also see RFC 2616 sec 3.2.3).  It is not the case that if two
HTTP URIs are *not* equivalent (even modulo 2616/3.2.3), that they do *not*
represent the same resource.  The only way to determine whether two non equivalent
HTTP URI represent the same resource latter is to have authoritative info about
that equivalence (or lack thereof).  One way for that authoritative info to be
communicated is with an HTTP redirect.

Even the current CTURI draft has the latter problem, as the encoding is not
canonical.

MB

Received on Tuesday, 25 September 2001 14:50:57 UTC