# Re: Changes to URL document

Alan Emtage (bajan@bunyip.com)
Thu, 17 Feb 1994 18:28:55 -0500

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    Message-Id: <9402172328.AA26704@mocha.bunyip.com>

    From: bajan@bunyip.com (Alan Emtage)

    Date: Thu, 17 Feb 1994 18:28:55 -0500

    In-Reply-To: Tim Berners-Lee's message as of Feb 17, 10:35

    To: timbl@www0.cern.ch

    Subject: Re: Changes to URL document

Hello Tim,

> > I believe that the initial discussion in the current draft is in conflict
> > with this since the first 6 or so pages try to fill this role and this
> > will be taken up by another document. This document should concern itself
> > with the definition of the URL and leave the design criteria to the doc
> > mentioned above.
>
> Who is working on this draft? Karen and Larry are defiing URNs not URLs
> or URIs. If I take out a definition of what the document is about,
> I need something to refer to. I can refer to Karen and Larry's document
> for the definition of a URN, and perhaps of a URL which they do
> define in passing. But that document does not give requirements for URLs.
> What can I quote here?

John Kunze has a copy of the draft document that was presented at Houston
and will be cleaning that up and posting it to the list. I think this
will work quite nicely since there was pretty broad agreement on what was
to be in and, more importantly, out of that document. We should have it
soon. I don't expect that there will be any (ok, "much" :-) controversy
over that document since the meeting was quite clear on it and most of
the points made were listed in the minutes and people seem to have agreed
to them.

> > 2) The term "universal" is used quite widely in the document. Since the
> > group decided some time ago (when we changed the name to Uniform Resource
> > Identifier), this is probably not appropriate. We can't really claim to
> > have a "universal" system. A "uniform" system more adequately describes
> > it.
>
> The universality of the URI name space is in fact important,
> but if you like I will take that out of the document and make this draft
> only talk about URLs. I propose to write a separate informational
> document on WWW's use of URIs as input to the group. This would be
> appropriate given the group's desire to take into account but not
> be driven by current designs.

More than appropriate I think... necessary. As the the first system to
widely deploy URLs (in the basic framework, not the exact syntax being
proposed) I think the group would welcome such a document. Please bring
it along... we'll move into the flow...

> > 5) The WG has decided that the "URL:" prefix is standard and this should be
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > made clear in the draft. Currently the only place that this appears is in
> > the BNF. It should rightly be part of the "Scheme" section which
> > currently makes no mention of it.
>
> Sorry, I wasn't clear to me that it had. Look at Larry Masinter's
> message of 17 Dec available as
> <http://www.acl.lanl.gov/URI/archive/uri-archive.messages/900.html>
> summaries the problems. My personal feeling is that this shouldn't hold
> us up as defining the URL itself is more important that its wrappers
> for plain text. But there seem to be a lot of suggestions about this.
> Do you regard prefix as part of the URL, or part of a wrapper for
> plain text use? Have I missed a roar of consent about this one?

[Alan's thought bubble:]
Oh God :-) I don't want to reopen this debate... really, really I don't.
Ok, let me see if I can try it this way (he thinks naively), maybe
they won't kill me....

[In an authoratative voice:]

"The working group has decided..."

Seriously folks, having discussed this at length with my co-chair, the
AD's and several of you privately since Houston here is my sense of where
the group stands and how best to move on.

(1) The URL: prefix debate splits people in to 3 groups.

(a) Vehement supporters "for"
(b) Supporters "for" & supporters "against"
(c) Vehement supporters "against" (I'm not sure if you can "support
against" something but you get the idea)

(b) has people with defined opinions but who are willing to let the
respective opposing side "win" to allow us to move on.

It is the opinion of the WG Chairs and the ADs (all 3 of whom were
present for the debate in Houston) that the (a) and (b) groups have shown
the greater numbers "for" and thus the motion FOR a "URL:" prefix as part
of the URL proper carries under the conditions of "rouch consensus".

This IN NO WAY invalidates the arguments of (c). Their points are noted
and remain valid.

Look folks, this has become somewhat of an intractible point. Which, all
things considered is not too bad considering that we have few of them and
in the general scheme we have broad consensus on a wide range of issues
in a very complex area. At this stage (a) and ("for" b) are not going to
change many of the minds of (c) so we have reached a crossroads and a
decision has been made.

2) The issue of the wrapper (in plain text) needs to be resolved. People
seem to be starting to use the <> syntax although no formal decision has
been made on that yet. I think the concept is pretty well accepted so it's
a matter of choosing what its going to be. People working with HTML have
understandably complained that this will make their life more difficult.
Can we reach some closure on this one?

URN requirements are well on their way and we should be into the specs
stage in time for Seattle (5 weeks). URCs are a bit of an unknown
quantity at this time so we'll have to start that debate going.

    --
    -Alan

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