Re: uri-character (was: mailto URIs)

On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 22:20:02 +0100, Frank Ellermann  
<nobody@xyzzy.claranet.de> wrote:

> Charles Lindsey wrote:
>
>> It says "the characters '%', '@', '/' and '#' are reserved
>> and MUST be %-encoded if they occur. All other characters
>> MAY be used freely to represent themselves".
>
>> AIUI, saying that is consistent with RFC 3986.
>
> Maybe (!) DQUOTE, "<", ">", "\", "^", "`", "{", "|", "}" also
> MUST be %-encoded where they occur.  If that's the case it's
> relevant for your <printable-ascii> and <wildmat>, or for my
> <unique>.

True. Fortunately, none of those can appear in a newsgroup-name under  
either RFC 1036 or USEFOR (though some bizarre use of NNTP might encounter  
them). And they are pretty uncommon in message-ids, except those  
deliberately obfuscated for trollish reasons.

Since they are generically banned by RFC 3986, do they need to be  
mentioned when specifying a particular scheme? Presumably not, though it  
might be a kindness to do so. Clearly, individual schemes need to indicate  
which of the reserved set have to remain reserved in each of the fields  
allowed by the scheme, and that is all I did in my draft. Yes, I can see  
that I should not have said that "All other characters..." bit. So I now  
have:

    Within a <printable-ascii> or a <wildmat> (and hence within a
    <newsgroup-name>), the characters '@', '/' and '#' are reserved and
    MUST be %-encoded if they occur. All other characters within
    <reserved> and <unreserved> [RFC 3986] MAY be used freely to
    represent themselves. It is not precluded that future extensions for
    internationalized <newsgroup-name>s may permit octets outside of the
    given ranges, in which case they too MUST be %-encoded (except
    perhaps when used in an IRI [RFC 3987]).


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Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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Received on Thursday, 23 June 2005 11:15:16 UTC