# Re: URL: Outstanding issues

Michael Mealling (ccoprmm@oit.gatech.edu)
Sun, 27 Mar 94 14:48:52 EST

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    From: ccoprmm@oit.gatech.edu (Michael Mealling)

    Message-Id: <199403271948.AA17968@oit.gatech.edu>

    Subject: Re: URL: Outstanding issues

    To: connolly@hal.com (Daniel W. Connolly)

    Date: Sun, 27 Mar 94 14:48:52 EST

    In-Reply-To: <9403252112.AA06283@ulua.hal.com>; from "Daniel W. Connolly" at Mar 25, 94 3:12 pm

Daniel W. Connolly said this:
>In message <94Mar24.200246pst.2732@golden.parc.xerox.com>, Larry Masinter write
>>> re: PrePrefix
>>
>>Tim, you're not helping us by reviving it this way. We decided that
>>"Telephone:" is a mandatory part of writing down a telephone number in
>>any ascii encoding of telephone numbers.
>
> [Sorry, but I wasn't around when this was decided.]
>
> "Telephone:" is only necessary when the context doesn't specify what
> the ASCII string is. In the only widely deployed usage of URL's
> (HTML) it's perfectly clear which strings are URLs and which are not.

> <plus some other stuff from Dan concerning ASN1 and SGML in another>
> <messages of which this is also a response>

Theoretically that is correct. If programatically I know that all xxx-xxxx
are U.S. phone numbers when accompanied by an SGML DTD or some ASN.1
specification then fine. But I can't give that to a secretary and expect
her to write up a URC for all 600 of the documents my department
puts out. A good example is HTML and HTML+, I actually have only
a very few documents on my server that have any HTML+ entries in them
because only our CS majors know enough about coding to implement them.

And the argument that "we'll have programs to write the formats for us"
holds little water since we still don't have good FULL HTML+ editors.

The template (call them RFC822 headers if you want but they seem to work
for IAFA and whois++) method gives us an easy way to allow very illiterate
users to write URCs as well as an easy upgrade path to whatever
specification method we may come up with (read "agree on") years from now.

-MM

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