Re: [046-lc-edit-relative-URI] proposed patch

* Roy T. Fielding wrote:
>On Sep 16, 2004, at 2:39 AM, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
>> The change is by no means editorial,
>
>Editorial means that the technology does not change -- only the words
>used to describe it.  It is editorial whether you like it or not.

Without your change the document defines what a relative-URI is, with
your change it does not. I consider the terminology part of the tech-
nology as that is what people use to interact with the technology. It
is like a public interface in computing, you can rename stuff while
remaining internally consistent, yet software breaks if you do it.

>There is no incompatible change.  How can I find rationale for a figment
>of your imagination?  You should be providing us with rationale.

There is a broad range of specifications that consider e.g. "/foo" a
"URI" as defined in RFC2396, RFC2396bis says it is not a "URI", it
should be obvious that this is not compatible. Similar for "#x", per
RFC2396 this is not a relativeURI, draft-fielding-uri-rfc2396bis-06
considers it a relative-URI, that is obviously not compatible either.

>Can you be more specific?  What change?  What definition do you think is
>right?  What implementations are you basing your opinion on?  What are
>you going to do about the vast majority of implementations that disagree
>with your interpretation?  What implementations are *you* responsible 
>for that are, or would be, impacted by either definition?

Sorry but I am unable to find any evidence that considering "/foo" not a
URI is in any way common in specifications, implementations, or other
common usage. My experience is exactly the opposite. If you could point
out software that throws syntax error exceptions when passing "/foo" to
what expects a URI that would be helpful, but it seems rather unlikely
to me that such software constitutes a vast majority in any sense.

Received on Friday, 17 September 2004 07:43:53 UTC