# Type information in URLs

Erik Ostrom (eostrom@gac.edu)
Sat, 23 Oct 1993 01:23:14 (CDT)

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    From: eostrom@gac.edu (Erik Ostrom)

    Message-Id: <9310230623.AA02279@gac.edu>

    Subject: Type information in URLs

    To: masinter@parc.xerox.com (Larry Masinter)

    Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1993 01:23:14 (CDT)

    In-Reply-To: <93Oct22.222549pdt.2795@golden.parc.xerox.com> from "Larry Masinter" at Oct 22, 93 10:25:40 pm

> > and as such should be in the UR[C|M].
>
> Maybe the problem is that we're trying to make them all different.
> What if there were a single thing that could either be a name or an
> address and also had type information and other kinds of things?

But that would have to include a way to specify an address, and that's
the purpose the URL fills. I haven't looked closely at UR[CM] ideas,
but it seems to me your single thing sounds like one of them. The
problem is that we need to pass type information around along with
location information, or the location information doesn't help much.

> Current WWW clients have ugly kludges where they try to guess that
> FTP-able files that end in .ps are postscript, etc.
>
> Summary: taking type information OUT of gopher locations is a step in
> the wrong direction.

No, calling a location a location is a good thing. Practically
speaking, though, WWW needs to start passing metainformation around
along with the URL before it can afford to have the metainformation
removed from the URL.

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