RE: QA Tips: Make readable URIs

> -----Original Message-----
> From: olivier Thereaux [mailto:ot@w3.org] 
> Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2004 4:46 AM
> To: Victor Engmark
> Cc: www-qa@w3.org
> Subject: Re: QA Tips: Make readable URIs
> 
> 
> On Aug 4, 2004, at 20:56, Victor Engmark wrote:
> >> 	http://www.w3.org/QA/2004/08/readable-uri
> > This looks good. Still, IMHO it needs more work:
> > - I found one grammatical error, so a quick check should be done.
> 
> Good catch. But Where is it?
> The document passes spell check, but either my eyes or my 
> english are not good enough to find the grammatical error you mention.

Sorry about that, I'll clarify (this is not guaranteed to be correct, of
course):

"to try and keep URIs simple* -> "to try TO keep URIs simple"
"technology-specifics" -> "technology specifics"

> > - I do not agree to the tip about making web addresses 
> opaque. Perhaps 
> > the title should be changed to specify that the theme is 
> URLs, not the 
> > more general URIs. URLs have always had, and probably will 
> continue to 
> > have meaning.
> 
> That's where you'll have to quote relevant documentation if 
> you want to convince me of your rather bold statement that 
> URLs always had meaning.

Take the URL http://www.w3.org/QA/2004/08/readable-uri: It tells me that
the protocol is HTTP, that it is a web page (for somebody not familiar
with the web, w3.org might not look like the same), that W3 is an
organization, and that the readable-uri page was published by the QA
group in August 2004.

> As far as I can tell, even though early-web-documents were 
> soul-searching with regards to URIs/URLs, all post-1997 
> documents clearly state that URI=URL[1] (which makes the 
> first part of your statement moot) and that these are opaque 
> by design[2]

AFAIK, URLs are a subset of URIs, with the differences that:
- a URL is not necessarily an identifier, while a URI is, and
- a URL points to data about something, while a URI doesn't have to
point to the information.

> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/uri-clarification/
> [2] http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Axioms.html#opaque
> 
> I have actually been rather accommodating by using terms such 
> as "supposed", "rather", "not necessarily". In practice, many 
> people create URIs which are not opaque at all, but that does 
> not change the opacity-by-design of URIs any more than the 
> quantity of invalid "HTML4.01" pages change the HTML 4.01 
> specification.
> 
> Now, one could say that the design/specification is wrong, that
> HTML4.01 should really have marquee (or whatever tag/construct you
> like) and that URIs should be meaningful, but I hope we all 
> agree this is way, way beyond the scope of a "QA Tip".

This seems to me to indicate that URLs like abc://def.ghi.jkl/12345 are
preferable to http://www.w3.org/QA/2004/08/readable-uri. The first URL
is opaque, the second is most definitely not. Could someone please
clarify if this really the intent of the recommendation of having opaque
URIs? I always thought of it as more of a warning sign: Do not put more
information into URIs than strictly necessary, and leave out all
technical details.

> > - The "Why readable URIs" section should contain 
> descriptive examples.
> > Try to find those which might at first sight look easy to implement 
> > (http://fishing.com/fish.php?chapter=1&section=3), and which can be 
> > much more easily read if constructed differently 
> > (http://fishing.com/sea/rods/).
> 
> I'm all for examples in general. I am, however, concerned 
> that the tip is rather long already. A W3C Note benefits from 
> a lot of examples. The constraints of a "quick tip" make 
> things a little harder. Do you think examples are absolutely 
> necessary here for the comprehension of the ideas?

In this line of thought, perhaps it could be beneficial to collect the
tips into more of a book, groupable using either theme (usability, speed
of development, graphical) or technology (URIs, XHTML, validation,
internationalization). This might be too much work, though.

-- 
Victor Engmark

Received on Wednesday, 18 August 2004 15:00:51 UTC