Re: Comments on draft-fielding-uri-rfc2396bis-07

On Fri November 5 2004 13:59, Roy T. Fielding wrote:

> > If late editorial changes are being considered, I would suggest 
> > deleting this paragraph completely, since the first sentence can be 
> > read as contradicting the content of section 2.4, and as far as I can 
> > tell the second sentence repeats material already given at the 
> > beginning of section 2.
> 
> First, that is not an editorial change.  Second, it does not contradict
> anything if you read the entire section.  Third, it was added in 
> response
> to specific comments.  Fourth, the specification has already been 
> approved
> as a replacement for RFC 2396 and won't be changed except as required
> by the IESG.

Evidently the text isn't as clear and unambiguous as you apparently
believe it to be.  One also might wonder what is the point in recent
(late September of this year) publication of a draft as "a work in
progress" and soliciting comments, if comments are to be dismissed
out of hand.

> Finally, if anyone thinks the mailto specification does 
> not clearly specify what characters are reserved in the mailto URI,
> then fix the mailto specification -- all of the standards-track scheme
> specifications will have to be revised soon.

A fundamental problem with that is the apparent apathy of the
mailto URI authors.  An additional problem is the separation of
the mailto specification form the interdependent overall syntax
specification which occurred when RFC 2368 introduced new
features (and subsequently when the revision of RFC 1738 (viz.
RFC 2396) failed to incorporate the revised mailto specification;
from a practical point of view unless extraordinary measures are
taken by the RFC Editor, either a revised general URI
specification or a revised mailto URI specification will come first
if the documents are to remain separate.  While it may be
possible to address mailto issues w.r.t. RFC 2396 or w.r.t. the
draft under discussion, those sets of issues would necessarily
have to be addressed differently because of the different URI
syntax specifications.  With separate documents, there will be
a window where the latest revisions of the documents will be
incompatible.

Received on Friday, 5 November 2004 20:15:21 UTC