Message-Id: <9305251825.AA04910@expresso.bunyip.com>
From: Peter Deutsch <peterd@bunyip.com>
Date: Tue, 25 May 1993 14:25:03 -0400
In-Reply-To: "Mark P. McCahill"'s message as of May 25, 9:45
To: "Mark P. McCahill" <mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu>, uri@bunyip.com
Subject: Re: URLs, URIs, and references
[ You wrote: ]
> In message <9305250225.AA03986@expresso.bunyip.com> Peter Deutsch writes:
> >
> > I know that Mark McCahill and the UMinn gang are following
> > the URI work (Mark is on this list) and they have pledged
> > to merge in URx support once we freeze things (another
> > argument for taking a snapshot of URLs and URNs and
> > getting things out.
>
> As I follow the debate on this list, I wonder WHEN things
> will hold still long enough to use this stuff. I'm
> disappointed that it is taking so long...
>
>
> > A lot of people want this stuff to so
> > they can get on with things).
> >
>
> yeah. How about a good-enough solution ?
One thing I think is lacking, especially with the URN
debate, is experience with a few real world systems. At
the same time, URLs are currently only supported via a
couple systems, such as WWW, and this can't but help warp
the debate since it has remained abstract. I was really
tickled to hear about the first, unsuccessful attempt to
mail some around. _That_ was an important contribution to
the debate and one that made we wonder if we shouldn't go
back and reexamine 1) our basic wishlist and then 2)
whether we can't in effect do something really simple,
such as bludgeon MIME into encoding what we want as a very
small set of attributes and be done with it . They've got
the transport side nailed, there'd be no silly debate
about line length, encoding spaces and other "bad
characters" and we could concentrate on other things.
Even if we keep what we have, I've posted the call for
basic principles several times, unsuccessfully. Nobody
else seems to pick up on this (probably because I always
put it on page 214, of a 300 page tome). Just in case, I'm
keeping this under a 100 lines and see if it makes a
difference..... ;-)
- peterd
--
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Peter Deutsch, (514) 875-8611 (phone)
Bunyip Information Systems Inc. (514) 875-8134 (fax)
<peterd@bunyip.com>
"Charging for information is not a crime, any more than charging for food is
a crime. On the other hand, I agree that letting people _starve_ is a crime."
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