# Changes to URL document

Tim Berners-Lee (timbl@ptpc00.cern.ch)
Thu, 17 Feb 94 10:35:19 +0100

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    Date: Thu, 17 Feb 94 10:35:19 +0100

    From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@ptpc00.cern.ch>

    Message-Id: <9402170935.AA04040@ptpc00.cern.ch>

    To: bajan@bunyip.com (Alan Emtage)

    Subject: Changes to URL document

Alan, you say:
> From: bajan@bunyip.com (Alan Emtage)
> Date: Mon, 7 Feb 1994 11:28:49 -0500

> I have retrieved the draft and asked Tim to make the following changes to
> conform to the decisions of the working group before resubmitting it to
> the Secretariat as a new draft.
>
> ----------------------
>
> 1) From the minutes:
>
> - The Area Directors require the group to produce a companion document
> to the current URL draft containing a list of functional
> specifications and requirements. This document can then be used to
> determine if the current URL draft meets the requirements. Similar
> documents will be required for all UR* protocol specifications.
>
> I believe that the initial discussion in the current draft is in conflict
> with this since the first 6 or so pages try to fill this role and this
> will be taken up by another document. This document should concern itself
> with the definition of the URL and leave the design criteria to the doc
> mentioned above.

Who is working on this draft? Karen and Larry are defiing URNs not URLs
or URIs. If I take out a definition of what the document is about,
I need something to refer to. I can refer to Karen and Larry's document
for the definition of a URN, and perhaps of a URL which they do
define in passing. But that document does not give requirements for URLs.
What can I quote here?

> 2) The term "universal" is used quite widely in the document. Since the
> group decided some time ago (when we changed the name to Uniform Resource
> Identifier), this is probably not appropriate. We can't really claim to
> have a "universal" system. A "uniform" system more adequately describes
> it.

The universality of the URI name space is in fact important,
but if you like I will take that out of the document and make this draft
only talk about URLs. I propose to write a separate informational
document on WWW's use of URIs as input to the group. This would be
appropriate given the group's desire to take into account but not
be driven by current designs.

> 3) While the document is "wordsmithed" by the author, under the IETF
process
> it is viewed as the product of the working group and as such "author's
> comments" are probably not appropriate (such as those in the section on
> readability). In any case this more properly belongs in the requirements
> document.

I'll strip the document down to the bare bones, removing the chat.
I agree that author's comments, while ok in an original ID
are no longer appropriate when they are editor's comments.

> 4) References to non-standard URLs should be left out in the main text.
> For example the section on the "Full Form" URL don't make much sense since
> for the purposes of the document there is no other form. The same applies
> to references to fragments in the main body. I suggest that if you would
> like to put these into the process that they be split out from this
> document entirely and submitted to the working group for separate
> consideration.
>
> 5) The WG has decided that the "URL:" prefix is standard and this should be
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> made clear in the draft. Currently the only place that this appears is in
> the BNF. It should rightly be part of the "Scheme" section which
> currently makes no mention of it.

Sorry, I wasn't clear to me that it had. Look at Larry Masinter's
message of 17 Dec available as
<http://www.acl.lanl.gov/URI/archive/uri-archive.messages/900.html>
summaries the problems. My personal feeling is that this shouldn't hold
us up as defining the URL itself is more important that its wrappers
for plain text. But there seem to be a lot of suggestions about this.
Do you regard prefix as part of the URL, or part of a wrapper for
plain text use? Have I missed a roar of consent about this one?

> [There are a couple of sentences which don't parse. "Abstract" final
> paragraph and "Characteristics" for example. I'm sure the list will be
> happy to make an editing pass]

Thanks. Look like odd lines of text which have got lost :-? .
(Makes me wonder whether in fact a few paragraphs have gone!)

> -Alan
Tim

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