Canonical Form of URIs "/" and IRIs

I have two comments on section 6.3 of

http://gbiv.com/protocols/uri/rev-2002/draft-fielding-uri-rfc2396bis-03.html
#canonical-form

1) suggest add the following additional rule:

+ For URIs following the generic syntax produce an abs_path of "/" in
preference to omitting the abs_path
 (this might need an additional example earlier in the doc
http://example.com
vs http://example.com/ )


2) may it be helpful to explicitly extend the rule:

"Only perform percent-escaping where it is essential. "

to considerations where the URI is being transported in a way that
anticipates IRIs e.g. XML system identifiers - and to discourage %-escaping
of non-ASCII chars in such circumstances.

(I note that XML Namespaces 1.1 is explicit about this:

"Because of the risk of confusion between IRIs that would be equivalent if
derefenced, the use of %-escaped characters in namespace names is strongly
discouraged."

http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/PR-xml-names11-20031105/

)

Jeremy

Received on Thursday, 4 December 2003 12:43:02 UTC