# Re: Minor clarification on url: prefix

Peter Deutsch (peterd@bunyip.com)
Thu, 2 Dec 1993 13:38:49 -0500

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    Message-Id: <9312021838.AA11141@expresso.bunyip.com>

    From: Peter Deutsch <peterd@bunyip.com>

    Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1993 13:38:49 -0500

    In-Reply-To: Dirk Herr-Hoyman's message as of Dec  2,  9:42

    To: hoymand@joe.uwex.edu (Dirk Herr-Hoyman), timbl@nxoc01.cern.ch,

    Subject: Re: Minor clarification on url: prefix

[ Dirk wrote: ]

. . .
> I believe I heard another point
>
> For: Don't need to know EVERY URL access method.
>
> Against: Clients like Mosaic will rip off the url: prefix
> and look at the access method anyways.
>
> The only area I see this being really useful is in plaintext, like e-mail
> messages. But, I thought a <> wrapper had been proposed for this purpose
> anyhow (is this still in?) Trying to find URIs in plaintext is going to be
> an inexact science no matter what, since the syntax is already complicated
> and it's REAL people typing these in.

The prefix also makes it easier for non-technical human
users to recognize them, as well. It is easier to tell
people to look for something like <wrapper>URL:mumble<wrapper>
than teach them whatthe possible list of access method
prefixes are and how to parse the string and so on.

Of course, this accents the need for a wrapper and is
mitigated by the fact that human readibility is not a
requirement of the functional spec, but at the same time
others have mentioned readibility and I don't think anyone
has argued _against_ making things readible.

Since I believe there is full support for wrappers, when
we finally agree on what that should look like I think it
should be fairly easy to train technophobes to recognize
something that looks like:

<URL: mubblemubblefobar>

I'm not endorsing any particular wrapper proposal here,
merely commenting on the human usability side of things.

- peterd

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