# Re: irc: [was: New URN suggestion ]

Mandar Mirashi (mandar@kiowa.wildstar.net)
Mon, 19 Aug 1996 00:18:48 -0500 (CDT)

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    Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 00:18:48 -0500 (CDT)

    From: Mandar Mirashi <mandar@kiowa.wildstar.net>

    To: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>

    Subject: Re: irc: [was: New URN suggestion ]

    In-Reply-To: <96Aug18.212604pdt."2757"@golden.parc.xerox.com>

    Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.3.93.960819000735.13319A-100000@kiowa.wildstar.net>

On Sun, 18 Aug 1996, Larry Masinter wrote:

> The right way to add a new URL scheme definition is to write up an
> RFC. The "URL" update (long promised) will not include any new
> schemes.
>
> Larry
>

Hello Larry,

I've already drawn up a working draft. I'll submit it for
consideration as an RFC after it has been reviewed. It should
appear in a few days as draft-mirashi-url-irc-00.txt in the usual
locations. I've attached it at the end of my reply.
Thanks!

- Mandar

----- CUT HERE ------
Internet-Draft Mandar Mirashi
draft-mirashi-url-irc-00.txt mandar@wildstar.net
Expires: February 23, 1997 August 23, 1996

"irc: URL scheme"

Status of This Memo

This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working
documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its
areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also
distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts.

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six
months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other
documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-
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``work in progress.''

To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check
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nic.nordu.net (Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim),
ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast).

Abstract

A new URL scheme "irc:" is defined. The irc URL scheme is used to
refer to either IRC servers or individual channels on IRC servers,
as specified in RFC 1459.

Description

With the advent of "plugins", and realtime support via CGI and Java,
web developers have come up with different means to integrate IRC
support into their products. This document attempts to define a URL
scheme ("irc:") which would make this process easier.

An irc URL takes the form:

irc://<host>:<port>/<channel>

where,
<host>
The fully qualified domain name of a network host, or its IP
address as a set of four decimal digit groups separated by ".".
Fully qualified domain names take the form as described in
Section 3.5 of RFC 1034 [13] and Section 2.1 of RFC 1123 [5]: a

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Internet Draft irc: URL scheme August 23, 1996

sequence of domain labels separated by ".", each domain label
starting and ending with an alphanumerical character and possibly
also containing "-" characters. The rightmost domain label will
never start with a digit, though, which syntactically
distinguishes all domain names from the IP addresses.

<port> (optional)
The port number to connect to. If :<port> is omitted, the port
defaults to 6667. This may change in the future to default to the
IANA assigned IRC port 194, as it gains widespread use amongst
IRC servers.

<channel> (optional)
The individual channel to connect to, as specified in RFC 1459,
and listed here for convenience:
<channel> ::= ('#' | '&' | '+') <chstring>
<chstring> ::= <any 8bit code except SPACE, BELL, NUL,
CR, LF and comma (',')>

Examples

The URL:

irc://us.undernet.org/#wasteland

refers to global channel #wasteland on IRC server us.undernet.org.
The URL:

irc://uk.undernet.org:6665/&brits

refers to a local channel &brits on IRC server uk.undernet.org and
the connection takes place over port 6665.

Current Implementations

Despite the lack of a common URL scheme, many integration efforts
between IRC and the world wide web have been successful. These
can be roughly categorised into:

IRC plugins:
These are IRC clients distributed separately and designed to work
in close conjunction with the browser. Current plugins include:
http://home.netscape.com/comprod/chat.html
(Netscape Chat - Netscape Corp)
http://www.globalchat.com
(Global Chat - Quarterdeck Corp)
http://www.ichat.com/client.htm
(iChat - iChat Inc)

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Java gateways:
These take the form of a Java capable Web browser that interacts
with an IRC server and updates "live content" web pages. The
foll. URL's which illustrate these, were functional at the time of
writing:
http://polaris.ibm.com/~gong/irc_room.html
http://www.blackdown.org/~kbs/irctst/demo.html
http://virtual.itribe.net/jirc/
http://www.dimensionx.com/products/cafe/index.html
http://www.hdmdigital.com/~cknight/dotcom/zirc/
These gateways take up resources on the machine hosting the web
server, and are also slower than IRC clients which open a direct
connection to the IRC server. A variation of the Java gateway is a
CGI gateway, which is based on CGI scripts instead of Java, but
quickly fading from existence due to CGI's limited realtime
functionality.

IRC client - Web browser communication:
Recent IRC clients often communicate with the Web browser via
mechanisms such as API calls or DDE, and pass back a URL to be
opened via the browser. Clients that implement this include:
http://apollo3.com/~acable/virc.html (Visual IRC)
http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/1822/index.html (mIRC)
http://www.bcpl.lib.md.us/~frappa/pirch.html (Pirch)
It is anticipated that the irc: URL scheme would allow Web
browsers to open a local dynamic "live content" page as
demonstrated by the gateways (thus eliminating the need to go via a
gateway). They may also choose to open a plugin IRC client. The
choice is left to the individual Web client coder.

History

IRC as a protocol first appeared in 1988 and thus predates the world
wide web by several years. A formal specification of the protocol
was drawn up in 1993 (RFC 1459). Today, there are thousands of
simultaneous users on various IRC networks. Integration efforts with
the World Wide Web continue (as outlined above). The irc URL
scheme first appeared in the Rating Services and Rating Systems
document published by the PICS (Platform for Internet Content
Selection) technical subcommitee of the World Wide Web
Consortium:
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS/services.html
However, the original definition lacked RFC 1459 conformance. This
draft attempts to add RFC 1459 conformance to the scheme, besides
other features previously lacking.

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Internet Draft irc: URL scheme August 23, 1996

Security Considerations

The irc URL scheme introduces no new security considerations, not
already outlined in RFC 1459 and RFC 1738.

References

[RFC1738] RFC 1738. Uniform Resource Locators (URL).
T. Berners-Lee, L. Masinter & M. McCahill.
December 1994.
[RFC 1459] RFC 1459. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Protocol
J. Oikarinen, D. Reed. May 1993.

Author's contact information:

Mandar Mirashi
Poughkeepsie, NY 12601.
914-485-6264
mandar@wildstar.net
IRC Nickname: Mmmm

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