# Re: URL revision

Larry Masinter (masinter@parc.xerox.com)
Thu, 21 Jul 1994 00:19:42 PDT

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    To: connolly@hal.com

    In-Reply-To: "Daniel W. Connolly"'s message of Wed, 20 Jul 1994 22:07:55 -0700 <9407210507.AA10669@ulua.hal.com>

    Subject: Re: URL revision

    From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>

    Message-Id: <94Jul21.001943pdt.2760@golden.parc.xerox.com>

    Date: 	Thu, 21 Jul 1994 00:19:42 PDT

Re: Hello? Did I miss it again? WHAT IS THE ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF THIS?
I recall about 5-7 'nays' on this issue and not a single 'yea'.

This is the result of the survey for question 12:

gordoni@acid.base.com acceptable
ccoprmm@oit.gatech.edu unacceptable (require in ALL circumstances)
Guido.van.Rossum@cwi.nl preferable
m.koster@nexor.co.uk unacceptable
EH preferable
hoymand@gate.net preferable
connolly@hal.com preferable
combee@prism.gatech.edu acceptable
rdaniel@acl.lanl.gov preferable
dupuy@smarts.com acceptable
timbl@www0.cern.ch preferable
robison@nwnet.net preferable
fielding@simplon.ics.uci.edu preferable
mitra@pandora.sf.ca.us preferable
J.P.Knight@lut.ac.uk acceptable
jcurran@nic.near.net yep

If I were to add my own opinion, I'd add `preferable' too. However,
this was such an area of contention in the past, with repeated
confirmation that the consensus was to include "URL:" as mandatory in
all contexts that I think we need an explicit acknowledgement by those
who declared the previous state of consensus that the wording should
actually change.

================================================================

Re: url-wrappers: I had suggested earlier that the URL wrapper be
allowed to be alternately any of <>, "", '', {}, or whitespace, (or,
to be more precise <URL:...>, "URL:...", 'URL:...', {URL:...} or
<whitespace>URL:...<whitespace>.

The primary purpose of the wrapper characters is to delimit the end of
the URL, and to add an additional confirmation that the letters 'URL:'
actually preceed a URL.

I don't think any set of characters can do more than that, and
especially not 'distinguish URLs from other things': that is the role
of the URL: prefix.

Re reserved vs safe: I thought I made it explicit, but I will review
the wording. Please note that as it is written "#" is *not* reserved,
but rather, it is *universally unsafe*. Similarly, % is not
'reserved', it is unsafe. A file named foo.html#bar _must_ be
represented as foo.html%23bar, but not because # is reserved. As we
have reconstrued things, in http://myhost.dom/foo.html#line1 the
'#line1' is not part of the URL. This allows segment identifiers to be
associated with any kind of data, no matter what the syntax of the
scheme is. (This follows from the decision that individual schemes may
differ on what characters are reserved, even though they may not
differ on what characters are unsafe.)

I do want to make sure the draft is clear on these points, and I will
recheck it, and possibly expand these points.

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