Extension Relation Type Comparison - LC Comment on draft-nottingham-http-plink-header-07

[Eran Hammer-Lahav <[e-mail]>]

The current text about comparing extension relation types is unclear:

   When extension relation types are compared, they MUST be compared as
   URIs in a case-insensitive fashion, character-by-character.  Because
   of this, all-lowercase URIs SHOULD be used for extension relations.

What does it mean "compared as URIs"?

It is clear that these two URIs would be deemed equivalent:

http://example.com/rel/type
HTTP://example.COM/rel/TYPE

But are they also equivalent to:

http://example.com:80/rel/type

I would argue that normalizing URIs in this context is non-obvious and counter-intuitive. We are not using URIs for the purpose of resolving them, but only as a way to construct unique strings, using the URI format to define authority and minting rules.

I think we would be better off comparing extension relation types "as strings in a case-insensitive fashion, character-by-character".

EHL