# Relative URL diffs (draft 01 to 02)

Roy T. Fielding (fielding@avron.ICS.UCI.EDU)
Sun, 27 Nov 1994 05:34:23 -0800

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    To: uri@bunyip.com

    Subject: Relative URL diffs (draft 01 to 02)

    In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 28 Oct 1994 17:05:30 PDT."

                 <9410281705.aa25834@paris.ics.uci.edu>

    Date: Sun, 27 Nov 1994 05:34:23 -0800

    From: "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@avron.ICS.UCI.EDU>

    Message-Id:  <9411270534.aa03849@paris.ics.uci.edu>

*** draft-ietf-uri-relative-url-01.txt Fri Oct 28 16:39:30 1994
--- draft-ietf-uri-relative-url-02.txt Sun Nov 27 04:40:23 1994
***************
*** 1,10 ****
! Uniform Resource Identifiers Working Group R.T. Fielding
INTERNET-DRAFT UC Irvine
! Expires April 28, 1995 October 28, 1994
Relative Uniform Resource Locators
! <draft-ietf-uri-relative-url-01.txt>
Status of this Memo
--- 1,10 ----
! Uniform Resource Identifiers Working Group R. T. Fielding
INTERNET-DRAFT UC Irvine
! Expires May 27, 1995 November 27, 1994
Relative Uniform Resource Locators
! <draft-ietf-uri-relative-url-02.txt>
Status of this Memo
***************
*** 27,33 ****
munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim).
Distribution of this document is unlimited. Please send comments
! to the editor, Roy T. Fielding <fielding@ics.uci.edu>, or to the
URI working group (URI-WG) of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF) at <uri@bunyip.com>. Discussions of the group are archived at
<URL:http://www.acl.lanl.gov/URI/archive/uri-archive.index.html>.
--- 27,33 ----
munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim).
Distribution of this document is unlimited. Please send comments
! to the author, Roy T. Fielding <fielding@ics.uci.edu>, or to the
URI working group (URI-WG) of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF) at <uri@bunyip.com>. Discussions of the group are archived at
<URL:http://www.acl.lanl.gov/URI/archive/uri-archive.index.html>.
***************
*** 70,107 ****
those URLs which obtain global scope only when interpreted relative
to a separate base URL.
! A primary use for Uniform Resource Locators is to embed them within
a document (referred to as the "base" document) for the purpose of
! identifying other Internet-accessible resources. This is
! particularly true of hypertext documents, where URLs can serve as
! the identifiers for hypertext link destinations.
- It is often the case that, where a group or "tree" of documents
- serves a common purpose, the vast majority of URLs within those
- documents point to locations within that tree rather than outside
- of it. Similarly, documents located at a particular Internet site
- are much more likely to refer to other resources at that site than
- to resources at remote sites.
-
Absolute URLs contain a great deal of information which may already
be known from the context of the base document's retrieval,
including the access scheme, network location, and parts of the
URL path. In situations where the base URL is well-defined and
! known to the parser (human or machine), it is useful to be able to
! embed a URL reference which inherits that context rather than
! re-specifying it within each instance.
! In addition to the space saved, relative addressing of URLs allows
! document trees to be partially independent of their location and/or
! access scheme. For instance, if they refer to each other using
! relative URLs, it is possible for a single set of documents to be
! simultaneously accessible and, if hypertext, traversable via each
! of the "file", "http", and "ftp" access schemes. Furthermore,
! document trees can be moved, as a whole, without changing any of
! the embedded URLs. Experience within the World-Wide Web has
! demonstrated that the ability to perform relative referencing is
! necessary for the long-term usability of embedded URLs.
2. Relative URL Syntax
The syntax for relative URLs is the same as that for absolute URLs
--- 70,107 ----
those URLs which obtain global scope only when interpreted relative
to a separate base URL.
! A common use for Uniform Resource Locators is to embed them within
a document (referred to as the "base" document) for the purpose of
! identifying other Internet-accessible resources. For example, in
! hypertext documents, URLs can be used as the identifiers for
! hypertext link destinations.
Absolute URLs contain a great deal of information which may already
be known from the context of the base document's retrieval,
including the access scheme, network location, and parts of the
URL path. In situations where the base URL is well-defined and
! known, it is useful to be able to embed a URL reference which
! inherits that context rather than re-specifying it within each
! instance.
! It is often the case that a group or "tree" of documents has been
! constructed to serve a common purpose; the vast majority of URLs
! within these documents point to locations within the tree rather
! than outside of it. Similarly, documents located at a particular
! Internet site are much more likely to refer to other resources at
! that site than to resources at remote sites.
+ Relative addressing of URLs allows document trees to be partially
+ independent of their location and/or access scheme. For instance,
+ if they refer to each other using relative URLs, it is possible for
+ a single set of documents to be simultaneously accessible and, if
+ hypertext, traversable via each of the "file", "http", and "ftp"
+ access schemes. Furthermore, document trees can be moved, as a whole,
+ without changing any of the embedded URLs. Experience within the
+ World-Wide Web has demonstrated that the ability to perform relative
+ referencing is necessary for the long-term usability of embedded
+ URLs.
+
2. Relative URL Syntax
The syntax for relative URLs is the same as that for absolute URLs
***************
*** 113,125 ****
2.1. URL Syntactic Components
- The relative form relies on a property of the URL syntax that
- certain characters ("/") and certain path segments ("..", ".") have
- a significance reserved for representing a hierarchical space.
- Additional reserved characters are sometimes used to separate the
- URL path from other components, including object parameters (";"),
- query information ("?"), and fragment identifiers ("#").
-
Like absolute URLs, relative URL syntax is dependent upon the access
scheme. Some schemes use "?" and ";" to indicate special reserved
components, while others just consider them to be part of the path.
--- 113,118 ----
***************
*** 174,180 ****
relativeURL = [ absoluteURL | location | abs_path | rel_path ]
[ "#" fragment ]
! absoluteURL = scheme ":" [ location | abs_path | rel_path ]
location = "//" net_loc [ "/" rel_path ]
abs_path = "/" rel_path
rel_path = [ path ] [ ";" params ] [ "?" query ]
--- 167,173 ----
relativeURL = [ absoluteURL | location | abs_path | rel_path ]
[ "#" fragment ]
! absoluteURL = scheme ":" *[ uchar | reserved ]
location = "//" net_loc [ "/" rel_path ]
abs_path = "/" rel_path
rel_path = [ path ] [ ";" params ] [ "?" query ]
***************
*** 187,196 ****
scheme = 1*[ alpha | digit | "+" | "-" | "." ]
net_loc = *[ pchar | ";" ]
! query = *[ uchar | reserved | "#" ]
fragment = *[ uchar | reserved ]
! pchar = [ uchar | "?" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" | "#" ]
uchar = unreserved | escape
unreserved = alpha | digit | safe | extra | national
--- 180,189 ----
scheme = 1*[ alpha | digit | "+" | "-" | "." ]
net_loc = *[ pchar | ";" ]
! query = *[ uchar | reserved ]
fragment = *[ uchar | reserved ]
! pchar = [ uchar | "?" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" ]
uchar = unreserved | escape
unreserved = alpha | digit | safe | extra | national
***************
*** 630,636 ****
draft-ietf-uri-url-08.txt>, October 1994.
[3] Postel, J. and Reynolds, J.K., "File Transfer Protocol (FTP)",
! RFC 959, <URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc959.txt>, October 1985.
[4] Berners-Lee, T ., "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)" ,
CERN, <URL:ftp://info.cern.ch/pub/www/doc/http-spec.txt.Z>,
--- 623,630 ----
draft-ietf-uri-url-08.txt>, October 1994.
[3] Postel, J. and Reynolds, J.K., "File Transfer Protocol (FTP)",
! STD 9, RFC 959, <URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc959.txt>,
! October 1985.
[4] Berners-Lee, T ., "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)" ,
CERN, <URL:ftp://info.cern.ch/pub/www/doc/http-spec.txt.Z>,
***************
*** 649,656 ****
/pub/gopher/gopher_protocol/Gopher+/Gopher+.txt>, July 1993.
[7] Crocker, D. H., "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text
! Messages", RFC 822, <URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc822.txt>,
! April 1982.
[8] Horton, M. and Adams, R., "Standard For Interchange of USENET
messages", RFC 1036, <URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1036.txt>,
--- 643,650 ----
/pub/gopher/gopher_protocol/Gopher+/Gopher+.txt>, July 1993.
[7] Crocker, D. H., "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text
! Messages", STD 11, RFC 822,
! <URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc822.txt>, August 1982.
[8] Horton, M. and Adams, R., "Standard For Interchange of USENET
messages", RFC 1036, <URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1036.txt>,
***************
*** 661,667 ****
RFC977, <URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc977.txt>,
February 1986.
! [10] Postel, J. and Reynolds, J., "TELNET Protocol Specification",
RFC 854, <URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc854.txt>, May 1983.
[11] Davis, F., Kahle, B., Morris, H., Salem, J., Shen, T., Wang, R.,
--- 655,661 ----
RFC977, <URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc977.txt>,
February 1986.
! [10] Postel, J. and Reynolds, J.K., "TELNET Protocol Specification",
RFC 854, <URL:ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc854.txt>, May 1983.
[11] Davis, F., Kahle, B., Morris, H., Salem, J., Shen, T., Wang, R.,
***************
*** 681,688 ****
June 1993.
[14] Berners-Lee, T., Connolly, D., et al. "HyperText Markup Language
! Specification -- 2.0", HTML-WG draft (work in progress),
! <URL:ftp://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/html/>, October 1994.
[15] Kunze, J., "Functional Requirements for Internet Resource
Locators", Internet-Draft (work in progress),
--- 675,682 ----
June 1993.
[14] Berners-Lee, T., Connolly, D., et al. "HyperText Markup Language
! Specification -- 2.0", Internet-Draft (work in progress),
! <URL:ftp://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/html/>, November 1994.
[15] Kunze, J., "Functional Requirements for Internet Resource
Locators", Internet-Draft (work in progress),
***************
*** 701,707 ****
Fax: +1 (714) 824-4056
Email: fielding@ics.uci.edu
! This Internet-Draft expires April 28, 1995.
10. Appendix - Embedding the Base URL in HTML documents.
--- 695,701 ----
Fax: +1 (714) 824-4056
Email: fielding@ics.uci.edu
! This Internet-Draft expires May 27, 1995.
10. Appendix - Embedding the Base URL in HTML documents.

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