To: jak@violet.berkeley.edu
In-Reply-To: jak@violet.berkeley.edu's message of Wed, 10 Aug 1994 10:10:18 -0700 <94Aug10.101046pdt.2769@golden.parc.xerox.com>
Subject: Re: Draft URL document, for last call to be proposed standard RFC
From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
Message-Id: <94Aug10.111759pdt.2760@golden.parc.xerox.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 1994 11:17:45 PDT
Thank you for your comments.
Re "on the Internet" being an 'untrue' qualifier:
I think that "on the Internet" isn't a phrase that has a precise
definition here. It seemed important to qualify that we were not
necessarily trying to provide access to data that might be only
available if you logged onto CompuServe, or that was hidden away in
some proprietary networking scheme. Even in the counterexample you
cite (the file: scheme), the location of the file is given as an
Internet host name (FQDN). The 'email' address is an Internet email
address, and not an X.400 email address.
If you think it would be better, we could change 'on the Internet' to
'from the Internet'.
re encoding hyphens:
I think it would be a terrible mistake to require hyphens to be
encoded merely because typographers might mis-typeset them. I'm
willing to put something in the appendix about hyphens. You know, in
the reason why it doesn't identify "whitespace" as tabs, newlines,
carriage returns, etc. is that the white space of a piece of paper
isn't necessarily any of those.
re: mailto URLs: the 'resource' identified by a mailto URL is not
necessarily a repository; it is just an email address. That there is
no data object necessarily associated with a mailto URL is consistent
with 'telnet' URLs. It's just a service. You can send mail to it.
I suppose that could be clarified too, as it is a common
misimpression.
The rest of your comments are taken as given, and will be addressed in
the next draft. I (and everyone else, I'm sure) would like there to
not be a new draft, but blatant gramatical problems must be tended to.
Again, thanks.
Larry