FW: Questions about RFC 2396

(I don't think this got posted to the list)
 
R eply:    
 
1 & 2: There's no contradiction, but the language could possibly be
clarified. There are a list of characters called 'reserved' which is
more appropriately 'reservable'. Whether a character is 'reserved'
depends on where it appears. A '&' or '=' is not reserved except inside
a query. 
 
3: The 'file' scheme nominally follows the generic syntax, but in
practice, much wider lattitude is allowed. (The interpretation of 'file'
URIs varies widely, unfortunately). file://xxx.pdf <file://xxx.pdf/>
has no well-defined meaning.
 
It would be great if there were a revised specification of the 'file'
URI scheme that not only documented current practice but also made
recommendations for future use, and documented consistent platform use.
 
4.  There is no need to escape ':'.
 

-----Original Message----- 
From:   Israel Viente 
Sent:   Sunday, February 02, 2003 5:01 PM 
To:     'timbl@w3.org'; 'fielding@ics.uci.edu';
'masinter@parc.xerox.com' 
Subject:        Questions about RFC 2396 

Hi all, 

Sorry if I turn to the wrong address but you are the "Authors" signed on
RFC 2396 so ... 
In case you are not the address for questions please direct me for the
one. 

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt 

1.  On section 2.2 
reserved = ";" | "/" | "?" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+" | "$" | "," 
On Section 3.3 
segment = *pchar *( ";" param ) 
pchar = unreserved | escaped | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "+" | "$" | "," 
The path may consist of a sequence of path segments separated by a
single slash "/" character. Within a path segment, the characters "/",
";", "=", and "?" are reserved. 

Q: There is a contradiction since "=" appears as valid in the "pchar=
...." line , but as reserved in the last sentence.

Shouldn't it be Within a patch segment , the characters "/", ";", ","
and "?" are reserved? 

2. How can "&" be a valid character in a path segment ? 
Shouldn't it be escaped ? 
After all it is a very common delimiter . 
For example http://www.any.com/cgi-bin/MaiL?a=F00
<http://www.any.com/cgi-bin/MaiL?a=F00&b=32d6&c=1234> &b=32d6&c=1234 
In case the a= or b= has value that includes "&" it should be escaped -
otherwise the web server can fail the parsing. 


3. In section 3.2 it is written 
The authority component is preceded by a double slash "//" and is
terminated by the next slash "/", question-mark "?", or by the end of
the URI. 

So: 
file://xxx.pdf 
Is it a valid example and what does it stand for ? 

or should it be only one of the following : 
file://file_server/xxx.pdf 
file:/e:/xxx.pdf 
file:///e:/xxx.pdf ? 



4. Should ":" be escaped in examples like 
file:/e:/xxx.pdf 
file:///e:/xxx.pdf ? 

Thanks in advance. 
Israel 
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Israel Viente 
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