Re: Last Call: <draft-holsten-about-uri-scheme-06.txt> (The 'about' URI scheme) to Proposed Standard

[Lachlan Hunt <[e-mail]>]

On 2011-06-22 06:39, Mykyta Yevstifeyev wrote:
>> (1) There seems to be consensus that registering this URI as a
>> mechanism for accessing built-in functionality and configuration
>> information such as application information, preferences, or
>> settings. (Text derived from the Abstract with "configuration
>> information", which may mean more to some readers, added and
>> "easter eggs" dropped. Dropping "easter eggs" reflects other
>> comments on the list and my opinion that it isn't worth the
>> trouble to define.
>
> With regard to easter eggs I have no strong position. If it is
> troubling, I don't object to remove any mention of them from the document.

The easter eggs are mentioned only in non-normative parts of the 
document, including the abstract and examples, and just reflect the 
reality of what some implementations use about URLs for.  I do not 
understand the objection.

>> (2) The document itself reflects an attempt to define the
>> undefinable. There is no cross-implementation interoperability
>> issue here; if anything, the document should me more clear that
>> it would be stupid to assume it. The document, nonetheless,
>> tries to define what is done with some specific URIs in some
>> places and then has to turn around and indicate that they may be
>> used in entirely different ways in other places and should not
>> be relied upon. In the process, it skips back and forth between
>> being descriptive and being normative, with some definitions
>> becoming circular in the process. That just isn't a good
>> combination and some of it actually looks pretty silly.

This feedback is not helpful, as it just vague hand waving and dismissive.

> I may partly agree with you. Reading the document for a number of times
> I've also noticed this. A logical conclusion of everything
> aforementioned is below.
>
>> "about:blank" is particularly troubling in that regard because
>> the text essentially says that it is reserved except where it
>> isn't.

Nonsense.  "about:blank" is clearly defined as reserved, and nowhere 
does it indicate otherwise.  Perhaps you are confused where it excludes 
variations that include query strings?

>> Option 2: Really try to make this normative wrt some subset of
>> URI values. In this approach, stop the extremely confusing
>> circling around.

The circular definitions have been resolved in the editor's draft.

https://github.com/josephholsten/about-uri-scheme/blob/master/draft-holsten-about-uri-scheme-07.txt

>> Indicate explicitly that "about" URIs have been used enough and in
>> enough different circumstances that no application should assume
>> that an "about" URI, if encountered, is actually its own and that
>> due caution needs to be taken about non-conforming implementations.

That's the whole point of the unreserved category.

>> Then explicitly reserve, not only"about:blank", but everything the
>> authors think is worth listing in Examples _and_ create an IANA
>> registry for more of them.

No.  The registry is a completely unnecessary bureaucratic mess that I'm 
strongly fighting against, and will most likely be removing from a 
future draft.  Mykyta added mention of it to the draft* against my 
wishes after I allowed him/her to become an editor even though (s)he has 
still not been able to provide justification for why such a registry is 
necessary.  (However, I allowed the draft to be publicised with it for 
public review and comment.)

* Note: That change hasn't been checked into github, and I don't know
   if Mykyta has those changes somewhere public yet.

The purely informative value of a registry can and has already been 
achieved by Wikipedia.  The three known reserved about URIs (blank, 
legacy-compat and scrdoc) are already documented, as are many other 
unreserved, but recognised application-specific URIs.

Beyond that, the whole concept of reservation only exists to give other 
specifications a clear way to define about URIs for their own purposes 
and doesn't need any formal registration process. It doesn't have any 
impact on any implementations that are not implementing the given 
specification.

>> the document should be really clear that all that the use of
>> "about:" really tells someone is that it is application-specific
>> and that a particular implementation of a particular application
>> may do whatever it pleases with them.

It still says that, though the way it is written is a quite ambiguous 
and convoluted and I understand the confusion here.  I'll rephrase the 
section on recognised URIs to address this.

>> Smaller issues:
>>
>> (i) Section 6, Normalization, sadly really doesn't belong here
>> unless the authors can show that everyone interprets "about:"
>> according to those rules. Otherwise, it would be better to say
>> that the URI is interpreted in an implementation-specific way
>> and that implementations would be well-advised to conform to
>> normal URI syntax rules unless there is a strong reason not

> Agree here. This thread restarted with the response to Boris's comment
> regarding Gecko's normalization rules. This was to claim that no unified
> rules for the scheme which is a priori used by the applications on their
> own. As I proposed below, if no document is to be written, the template
> may contain such statement about implementation-specific normalization
> rules.

Yes, normalisation requirements will be removed.

>> (ii) IMO, Section 7, Security Considerations, should be modified
>> to include an explicit statement that, since these things are
>> intended for convenience use within an implementation of an
>> application, passing them between systems (embedded in files or
>> otherwise) is very risky behavior and should generally be
>> discouraged except, possibly, in documentation contexts.
> I agree here.
> ...
> Section 4 is what is also questionable. This issue was raised during
> Last Call and I think can be resolved by saying that an about URIs may
> contain UTF-8 encoded characters in the <segment>, as suggested by RFC
> 3986 and that's all.

Mykyta, feel free to revise sections 4 and 7 as you see fit.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/