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

[David Booth <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, 2009-08-11 at 18:35 +0200, Kristof Zelechovski wrote:
> 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.

I respectfully disagree.  I think it is a virtual certainty that if the
WSS protocol is useful, it will be used in ways far beyond its original
intent.  I don't think it would be wise to artificially constrain the
applicability of a new protocol by claiming that casual users are not
'legitimate'.

> 
>  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.

I don't know exactly what you mean by "custom protocol", but WSS is
*exactly* the kind of protocol that [1] was talking about.  The
introduction uses "XyzConsortium" as an example, but you can think "WWW
Corporation" instead.

David

> 
> 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.
Cleveland Clinic (contractor)

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of Cleveland Clinic.