Re: [whatwg] New URL Standard from Anne van Kesteren on 2012-09-24 ([e-mail] from September 2012)

["Roy T. Fielding" <[e-mail]>]

On Oct 22, 2012, at 10:55 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Oct 2012, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>> On 18/10/2012 02:25, Noah Mendelsohn wrote:
>>> On 10/17/2012 7:57 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:
>>>> Yeah. Turns out we (the Web standards community) haven't been doing 
>>>> such a great job of making our specificatiosn match reality.:-(
>>> 
>>> Um, true... but it's also the case that the implementation community 
>>> hasn't over the years been doing as much as might be best to make 
>>> reality match the specifications. The new specs we're writing now 
>>> would like have been a lot thinner and cleaner if they had.
>> 
>> However, I think the concern here is that if certain IETF specs need to 
>> be updated to match the real world, that work needs to be done in the 
>> IETF.
> 
> I couldn't agree more! We've been waiting for four years for the URI 
> working group to get their act together and fix the URL mess. Nothing has 
> happened. We lost patience and are now doing it ourselves.

What you are insisting on defining as a "URL" is the input to the
process of making a hypertext reference (the arbitrary string typed
into a dialog or placed inside an href/src attribute), whereas the
IETF standards define the output of that process as a uniform
addressing syntax for use on the Internet by every application that
makes use of Web addresses.  Browsers implement both the input
processing and the output URI standards.  HTML must define the
input processing, either within the spec or by reference to a
new spec. The IETF defined the output standards for what goes
on the wire.

I would love to have a single standard for hypertext references.
However, they are not URLs, they are not implemented consistently
across HTML elements, and even within single elements they are
not implemented consistently across browsers.  It is a worthwhile
area to pursue further consistency, but only if you stop referring
to them as something they are not and never will be. "" is not a URL.

> I'm sure Anne would love nothing more than to be able to work on something 
> more interesting that this. But at the end of the day, someone has to do 
> it, and y'all aren't doing it.
> 
> This should not come as a surprise to anyone, the IETF and W3C have been 
> discussing this matter at last as far back as 2008.

Yes, we have been discussing it since 1994.  It would be nice
if you would take the advice already received and define
references in HTML, including the algorithms for converting them
into URI references (for DOM and network usage) and IRI
references (for display).

There is no need for any willful violations, since you aren't
even defining the same things.

....Roy