[apps-discuss] web origins and URIs

["Thomson, Martin" <[e-mail]>]

Hi Adam,

Looking at a discussion on origins today, my MTA decided to interpret all origins as URIs.

Obviously, this is not an intentional outcome.  As I read it, the intent is to extract a character sequence from a URI/IRI that is compared with other such character sequences for a variety of purposes (though mostly related to the same-origin policy in browsers).

Though an origin might take the form of a valid URI, it is not a URI.  This might lead to misinterpretation.

I'll admit that the effect (for HTTP at least) is unlikely to be severe, but it should be possible to avoid this altogether.  Why not define a new URI scheme for this purpose?

   origin:https://www.example.com:8443

Most apps wont care about the prefix, but when these leak out of their usage context, they are less likely to be misinterpreted if they are prefixed in this fashion.  (My MTA doesn't misinterpret the above, though others might still.)

--Martin