# Re: Wrappers for URLs

Marc Andreessen (marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu)
Sat, 8 May 93 14:06:00 -0500

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    Date: Sat, 8 May 93 14:06:00 -0500

    From: marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)

    Message-Id: <9305081906.AA20498@wintermute.ncsa.uiuc.edu>

    To: John Curran <jcurran@nic.near.net>

    Subject: Re: Wrappers for URLs

    In-Reply-To: <9305081704.AA10311@mocha.bunyip.com>

     <9305081704.AA10311@mocha.bunyip.com>

John Curran writes:
> We can select any character for space representation, as long as we
> recognize that we are eternally condemming said character to an
> inferior representation (%xx). Some characters that would not make
> good choices for this honor include period (used in hostnames) and
> slashes (used in filenames).
>
> My choice would be underscore, but then again I do not use it with
> any regularity. If anyone has strong reasons that underscores
> should be spared (or even better, recommendations for an alternate
> victim), please speak up.

Yo. Underscores are used far more frequently than spaces in actual
filenames on every system but the Mac, and substituting underscores
for spaces and then something else for underscores would be far more
counterintuitive in a broad majority of cases than leaving underscores
as they are now and doing something else with spaces (like %20).

This whole debate is a little silly. How about let's bite the bullet
on quoting spaces in URL's, as is currently done and as is currently
deployed in existing systems, and move forward on URN's, so URL's can
assume their more-or-less proper role as back-end mechanisms out of
normal user sight as soon as possible. I'm ready to put developer
time into building X/Mac/PC Mosaic clients that use URN's (and
servers, if necessary), as soon as a spec is ready -- the sooner the
better.

Cheers,
Marc

    --
    Marc Andreessen
    Software Development Group
    National Center for Supercomputing Applications
    marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu

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