- From: Simon St.Laurent <simonstl@simonstl.com>
- Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 19:29:03 -0400
- To: www-tag@w3.org
Roy Fielding writes: >When I use the term URI, I use it as defined in RFC 2396 and its >future revision. No other working group or standards body is >normative in regards to URIs. URLs are a subset of URIs. URLs >were called URIs until an IETF working group decided that the >artificial distinction would "resolve the issue", which turned >out to be false and the decision was reversed five years ago. >The fact that most people call them URLs, due to the mass >of user documentation produced between 1993-1997 that simply copied >the Mosaic help files, does not change what the standard says. > >BTW, anyone who claims that this is opportunistic revisionism >had better have something more than their opinion to back that up. Sure thing. There's a Standards-Track RFC from June 1999[1] that makes the following claims about URLs using the http scheme, the kind which have been at the heart of this thread: >3.2.2 http URL > >The "http" scheme is used to locate network resources via the HTTP >protocol. This section defines the scheme-specific syntax and >semantics for http URLs. > >http_URL = "http:" "//" host [ ":" port ] [ abs_path [ "?" query ]] > > If the port is empty or not given, port 80 is assumed. The semantics >are that the identified resource is located at the server listening >for TCP connections on that port of that host, and the Request-URI >for the resource is abs_path (section 5.1.2). I think my favorite aspect of this tidbit is "The semantics are that the identified resource is located at the server listening for TCP connections on that port of that host". The resource may be the listener, not the "representation" response, but this doesn't suggest the use of http URIs for things other than HTTP protocol listeners. While it is possible that this is just one of those accidental copyings from the Mosaic documentation, that seems extremely unlikely given the authorship of the document, its delivery after RFC 2396, and the care generally given during the RFC publication process. >The discussions on the nature of URIs can be found in the URI WG >and www-talk archives, and if you aren't willing to quote from >those archives then you aren't qualified to be arguing with me >about the nature of URIs. I think the consensus found in the URI community exists pretty much exclusively in that community, and meets with heavy resistance nearly every time it ventures beyond. It may in fact be better for specification developers to not be "qualified to be arguing with me about the nature of URIs." Roy later wrote: >Umm, what part of that diatribe implies that http URI are not >meaningful identifiers? HTTP/1.1 solved the problem of >differentiating between resources (what is identified) and >representations (what is the result of GET). It did not ignore it. I'm not sure what to make of that statement given the text cited above. I really shouldn't be talking about this, having disqualified myself already, but there's so much chapter and verse that merely needs repeating... [1] - http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt ------------- Simon St.Laurent - SSL is my TLA http://simonstl.com may be my URI http://monasticxml.org may be my ascetic URI urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.6320 is another possibility altogether ====== End Forwarded Message ====== ------------- Simon St.Laurent - SSL is my TLA http://simonstl.com may be my URI http://monasticxml.org may be my ascetic URI urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.6320 is another possibility altogether
Received on Wednesday, 9 October 2002 19:29:06 UTC