- From: Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>
- Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 07:27:22 -0700
- To: Norman Walsh <Norman.Walsh@Sun.COM>
- Cc: www-tag@w3.org
Norman Walsh wrote: > In section 2.2, URI Opacity, we say: > > Although it is tempting to guess at the nature of a resource by > inspection of a URI that identifies it, this is not licensed by > specifications; this is called URI opacity. > > Then later on we say > > mailto URIs identify mailboxes; ftp URIs identify ftp files and > directories; etc. > > It seems to me that these two statements are in conflict. Either you > aren't allowed to guess the nature of a resource from its URI, or you > are: it can't be both ways. Not in the slightest. It is perfectly OK for software to look at the URI scheme and act on that basis, the semantics of URI schemes are well-documented. The problem is looking into the opaque part, i.e. assuming that http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/Biz is a directory, or that http://example.com/foo.html yields HTML when dereferenced. Does the spec need to be clearer on what's OK and what's not? -Tim
Received on Monday, 22 September 2003 10:28:51 UTC