# Re: <'s for URLs

Tim Berners-Lee (timbl@www3.cern.ch)
Mon, 18 Oct 93 10:06:30 +0100

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    Date: Mon, 18 Oct 93 10:06:30 +0100

    From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@www3.cern.ch>

    Message-Id: <9310180906.AA01287@www3.cern.ch>

    To: Terry Allen <terry@ora.com>

    Subject: Re: <'s for URLs

>From: Terry Allen <terry@ora.com>
>Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1993 07:56:38 PDT
>
>Just tuning in on this channel. I notice a suggestion that

>URLs be enclosed withing angle brackets: <URN:etc ...>.

Not a suggestion, a motion passed (no, seriously!)
at the URI working group in Amsterdam.
>Please, if some enclosure is required, use anything but angle
>brackets, as they are SGML control characters (in the usual
>case), and our only way to parse HTML is by treating it as
>SGML. Anything but angle brackets!

The enclosure in <> was only designed as a way of
presenting them in plain ASCII text, like mail
messages. If you are writing SGML, then you may
want an element <uri>...</uri> which is
rendered at the renderer's discretion in italic
or using *lt; amd &gt;. If your SGML doctype is
in fact HTML< then the uris won't be visible
in the text, they will (normally) al be hidden
in attributes such as <a href="http:...">
The <>wrappers are NOT part of the URLs and
NOT needed in any oetr context than plain text
where they are the suggested way of allowing
mail readers for example to pick them out.
I realize this decision of the WG was not
echoed in the document and have added a small section
<http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Addressing/URL/5.1_Wrappers.html
which I hope makes it clear.
The wrapping is of course not part of the URI.
>Terry Allen (terry@ora.com)

Tim Berners-Lee

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