Re: [hybi] [Uri-review] ws: and wss: schemes

[Kristof Zelechovski <[e-mail]>]

 1.  The document "Converting New URI Schemes or URN Sub-Schemes to HTTP"
[1] specifically addresses the use case where the custom URL is presented to
a casual user.  Since there are no legitimate casual users of the Web
Sockets protocol that is designed to be used by Web applications only, there
are no benefits to introducing the additional complexity of using an http
alias.

 2.  Additionally, the proposed solution of using the URI prefix
"http://wss.example/" is suited for custom protocols, according to the
description at [1].  A protocol promulgated by the WWW Corporation can
hardly be viewed as custom.

IMHO,
Chris

[1] <URL:http://dbooth.org/2006/urn2http/>

-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]] On
Behalf Of David Booth
Sent: Friday, August 07, 2009 3:17 PM
To: Ian Hickson
Cc: [e-mail]; [e-mail]; [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [Uri-review] ws: and wss: schemes

On Fri, 2009-08-07 at 05:35 +0000, Ian Hickson wrote:
> The formal registrations for the ws: and wss: schemes, part of the Web 
> Socket protocol, will be available in the Web Socket protocol ID as soon 
> as the IETF upload process completes:
> 
>    http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hixie-thewebsocketprotocol#section-7
> 

This looks to me like a perfect example of a case where a new scheme is
not needed, as the same thing can be accomplished by defining an http
URI prefix, as described in "Converting New URI Schemes or URN
Sub-Schemes to HTTP":
http://dbooth.org/2006/urn2http/
Note that I am talking about the *scheme*, not the protocol.  In
essence, a URI prefix such as "http://wss.example/" can be defined that
would serve the same purpose as a "wss:" scheme: an agent that
recognizes this prefix will know to attempt the WSS protocol.  But an
agent that doesn't *might* still be able to fall back to doing something
useful with the URI if it were an http URI, whereas it couldn't if it
were a "wss:" URI.

-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.