# a couple of URL questions & comments

Dave Brennan (brennan@hal.com)
Mon, 17 May 93 16:56:37 CDT

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    Date: Mon, 17 May 93 16:56:37 CDT

    From: brennan@hal.com (Dave Brennan)

    Message-Id: <9305172156.AA25380@hysteria.hal.com>

    To: uri@bunyip.com

    Subject: a couple of URL questions & comments

Questions
---------

I was reviewing some of the URL discussions in the mailing list archive as
well as the URL document and was wondering why there seems to be this
tendency to munge different kinds of references into the slash-separated
format. The most recent example had to do with mail addresses. What's
wrong with using a "natural" representation for different types of URLs?
Why make things more complicated by introducing an extra level of mapping
that only needs to be undone by an application program or a person?

Also, in regard to the URL grammar, why are certain characters (like "=" for
one) not allowed? I, for one, would like to see a justification in the
URL document.

Comments
--------

Are there any plans to add a wrapper to URLs so that they can easily
be identified in free form text? I think that its important for programs
to be able to recognize a URI/URN/URL in any kind of document.

I also liked the concept proposed by the gang in Sweden about placing
information in URLs to make them more readable in different languages. I've
got a few interesting ideas on how to accomplish this which I may eventually
have a chance to write up. Given an intelligent front end program, it
should be possible to display a URL in a nicer format. Unfortunately, the
big problem with this is that you run the risk of a user trying to use the
"pretty printed" version. Therefore, I conclude that while information
should probably be provided to allow nicer formating applications should be
highly discouraged from displaying these "invalid" URLs.

Their example URL was: <ftp://othello.admin.kth.se/pub/l%e4s mig>

(And we'll quietly ignore that rogue space ;-)

This was described as the "program form." I don't belive there should be a
"human form" because it would be too easy to mix them up. Rather, an
application should display this without the URL syntax. This is assuming
that it's even necessary to display a URL, which should be infrequently.

    --
    Dave Brennan                                      HaL Computer Systems
    brennan@hal.com                                         (512) 794-2855

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