FYI RE: #foo URI references

In general Larry Masinter understands these issues better than
anyone and I would agree with him on not rocking the boat with
respect to relative URI resolution.


>>>>> "Al" == Al Gilman <asgilman@iamdigex.net> writes:
    Al> [Sent to PF, PF and UAAG Team Contacts, and WAI-CG by
    Al> Bcc: to avert cross-posting of threads.]
    Al> 
    Al> The issue is: should relative URIs which contain only the
    Al> #fragment syntax be resolved against the BASE of the
    Al> current Resource or the data in hand, the content of the
    Al> current document [a.k.a. Resource Representation].
    Al> 
    Al> Larry Masinter opined we should leave the "current
    Al> document" semantics intact as in the current RFC for
    Al> URIs.
    Al> 
    Al> I weakly agreed, offering an argument from disorientation
    Al> on refresh.
    Al> 
    Al> Find thread from original post to uri list at
    Al> 
    Al> X-Archived-At:
    Al> http://www.w3.org/mid/5.1.0.14.2.20030722093245.02739ec0@pop.iamdigex.net
    Al> 
    Al> Jon, Matt, Ian: I cite UAAG as precedent, here.
    Al> 
    Al> PF: Does anybody see a hole in my reasoning?  Should we
    Al> be saying anything stronger?
    Al> 
    Al> WAI-CG others: if you see an issue for your group, speak
    Al> up.
    Al> 
    Al> Al
    Al> 
    Al> -- original post where I take a position alleging
    Al> disability interest --
    Al> 
    Al> At 09:49 PM 2003-07-21, Larry Masinter wrote:
    Al> 
    >> I'm in favor of leaving "#foo" as a reference to 'this
    >> document' independent of having an explicit 'base'.
    Al> 
    Al> Caveat: haven't done extensive analysis of this, nor is
    Al> this in any way a consensus position from any subset of
    Al> the WAI, but there is at least one line of argument
    Al> suggesting that the disability interest would favor the
    Al> position that Larry asserted above.
    Al> 
    Al> This has to do with the disorientation that happens on
    Al> document refresh when someone is using a screen reader or
    Al> other delivery context where there is not a lot of
    Al> persistent display buffer between the client and the
    Al> user.  The concern leads to things like
    Al> 
    Al> <quote cite=
    Al> "http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10/guidelines.html#tech-configure-content-retrieval">
    Al> 
    Al>        3.5 Toggle automatic content retrieval (P1) (...)
    Al> 
    Al>      1. Allow configuration so that the user agent only
    Al> retrieves content on explicit user request.
    Al> 
    Al> </quote>
    Al> 
    Al> If we bind #foo to a full global path computed with the
    Al> latest state of the BASE property this could have the
    Al> effect of making intra-document references, that _can_ be
    Al> satisfied without a refresh, always force a refresh for
    Al> specification compliance.  An unintended but deleterious
    Al> result for the screen-reader-user (for example) could be
    Al> that all the web-author's careful construction of an
    Al> internal navigation system would be defeated because the
    Al> visitor was finding themselves in a different document
    Al> each time they try to use the navaids to move within the
    Al> one that they have in hand.
    Al> 
    Al> Since there is syntax, (is it sameTerminalPathSegment#foo
    Al> ?) that will have the global, with BASE invoked, effect,
    Al> and this is not that burdensome with the terminal path
    Al> segments that are commonly used, I don't see the downside
    Al> to what Larry espoused.
    Al> 
    Al> Al
    Al> 
    >> Larry
    Al>

-- 
Best Regards,
--raman
------------------------------------------------------------
T. V. Raman:  PhD (Cornell University)
IBM Research: Human Language Technologies
Architect:    Conversational And Multimodal WWW Standards
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Received on Tuesday, 22 July 2003 11:25:27 UTC