RE: '#' in mailto URIs

What about encouraging URI/IRI scheme registrations to
say about whether fragment identifiers are necessary,
important, useful, allowed.

mailto: could then disallow # fragment identifiers.

Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: "Martin J. Dürst" [mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 9:37 PM
To: Michael A. Puls II
Cc: Larry Masinter; jwz@jwz.org
Subject: Re: '#' in mailto URIs

This is some very old mail. The current mailto: draft doesn't contain 
anything about fragment identifiers. Should it?

The text that I might put in (if we think we need some) is:

 >>>>
Note that this specification, like any URI scheme specification, does 
not define syntax or meaning of a fragment identifier, because these 
depend on the media type of the retrieved resource. In the currently 
known usage scenarios, a 'mailto' URI does not serve to retreive a 
resource with a media type. Therefore, fragment identifiers are 
meaningless, SHOULD NOT be used on 'mailto' URIs, and SHOULD be ignored 
upon resolution.
 >>>>

Regards,   Martin.

On 2008/04/02 6:32, Michael A. Puls II wrote:
>
> <!--"charset=utf-8"-->
> On Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:18:27 -0400, Larry Masinter <LMM@acm.org> wrote:
>
>>> So, it sounds like, in short, you're saying that Safari and Firefox
>>> shouldn't use # that way because it's reserved for future use in mailto
>>> URIs.
>>>
>>> Perhaps you could explicitly note that in your next draft?
>>
>> It isn't reserved "for future use", it's just not allowed.
>
> Martin said that # is *always* a fragment identifier. If it's not
> allowed, ever, then you're saying that mailto URIs don't support
> fragment identifiers and won't ever support fragment identifiers because
> # is not allowed. (Which would make sense to me)
>
> If that's true, then a raw # that is found in a mailto URI (even though
> it's not allowed) would not be anything special and could just be
> accepted literally (if you were not going to throw an error).
>
> That would make sense to me.
>
> However, if mailto URIs support fragment identifiers or might support
> fragment identiers in the future, then # and everything after it in the
> URI needs to be ignored (at least by the mail client itself when parsing
> and filling in the compose fields).
>
> What I got from Martin's response is that mailto URIs (like http URIs)
> support fragment identifiers. It's just that no client *currently* makes
> use of them in any way for 'mailto'.
>
> Basically, I just need to be sure what to do with a raw # in a mailto
> URI (even if it's an error).
>
>> Not every possible string has to have an interpretation.
>
> I don't know what you mean by that sentence or what it pertains to.
> Please clarify.
>
> Thanks
>

-- 
#-# Martin J. Dürst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp

Received on Wednesday, 14 October 2009 17:32:27 UTC