- From: Mike Dierken <mike@dataconcert.com>
- Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 11:53:08 -0700
- To: "'Amelia A Lewis'" <alewis@tibco.com>
- Cc: "'xml-dist-app@w3.org'" <xml-dist-app@w3.org>
> > > > > > It isn't GETtable. It's non-idempotent. > > > > GET mailto:mike@dataconcert.com HTTP/1.1 > > Host: magic.httpserver.net > > User-Agent: not-your-fathers-browser > > Authentication: BASIC YA4H8G== > > Accept: text/xml; message/rfc822; text/plain > > Sorry to be stupid, but does this do anything useful? > > By its nature, as far as I can parse it, a mailto URL is > going to indicate a state-changing, non-idempotent action, > and thus isn't appropriate for a GET. For that matter, I > don't quite understand how one would 'get' a mailto .... But > you've produced an example, what does it mean? > It just means that the URI can be used in an HTTP GET situation. The mailto: scheme isn't all that descriptive of the resources on a mail server that a client can interact with. This was sort of a forced example to try to show that URI are only identifiers and even though 'mailto' sounds (to a human) like a directional action, it isn't. So, from a URI point of view, a mailto URI isn't an 'action'. It identifies a resource that can be interacted with via SMTP, IMAP, POP3. You can talk /about/ the resource in other contexts by referencing the resource with mailto: also, which is a secondary purpose of identifiers in addition to direct interaction. But this is stretching things because of the history of mailto: - it'd be nice to have a more clearly defined mail: or mailbox: or im: URI scheme that provided the naming of resources for complete, rich 'Web automatable' access. mike
Received on Tuesday, 9 July 2002 14:54:23 UTC