Re: HTTP is a domain name

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 31-Aug-22 14:11, Larry Masinter wrote:
> TL;DR proposal: register drop# as requested (with a note added); then maybe
> we can drop#it.

Even your reference [7], which appears pretty quixotic, says:

url 	::= 	[ scheme : ] ( auth-path | path ) [ ? query ] [ # fragment ]

See that mandatory ":" there?

    Brian

> 
> A "URI scheme" is kind of like a domain name from the following perspective:
> 
> If you own the top-level domain "pizza" then you have the right to hand out
> names like "joes.pizza" and "best.pizza" and "tasty.pizza". These domain
> names are valuable and you have to pay big bucks to be able to own that
> right.  Not too long ago there was a big flap over the sale of ".org" to a
> private equity group for an ungodly amount. From the point of view of
> imagining how most people in the world think about these things,  "http"
> and ".org" are "drop" (in drop#something) are kind of the same kind of
> thing.
> 
> 
> Now, if you own a URI (or if you like, URL) scheme, like "pizza" (or
> "drop") you might think this gives you the right to hand or manage or
> control names starting with those, like  "pizza:joes or pizza:best", or
> "drop:everything" or "drop:number" or "drop:dead".
> That is, the resource identified was the abstraction, with representations
> of abstractions imply an implicit MIME type with fragment identifiers
> naming the actual concept identified.
> 
> You might even establish a convention that the "drop" URI scheme supports a
> null body so that "drop:" by itself identified "the world of drop numbers"
> and the particular semantics of "the world of drop numbers" was instead
> typically identified by the fragment identifier, so that
> "drop:#best%20pizza" would turn out to identify the source of the best
> pizza (at least as designated by the owner of the "drop" scheme).
> 
> You might even want to build and deploy a set of clients and utilities that
> had the convention that a URI without a host or path but with a fragment
> identifier could be transmitted and understood that the intervening
> punctuation can be elided, allowing usages such as "drop#pizza",
> "drop#everything" or even "drop#dead".
> 
> You might even plan to offer a service (as RealNames and others [1] did)
> using the Common Name Resolution Protocol [2]  (or an alternative meeting
> the same goals [3]). Perhaps you could use an existing registered but
> unused scheme (e.g. "go" [4]) or register a new one (say "drop").
> 
> The syntax of URIs / URLs is not settled; the IETF has RFC 3986[5], WHATWG
> has the URL Living Standard[6], with mare more candidates for a definitive
> specification [7] (message received TODAY!).. Pleas to address the
> situation [8][9] or even consistent implementation in browsers have largely
> gone unheeded [10]. But the one thing that is worse than having two
> incompatible specs for the "same" thing (if they are) is having three.
> 
>   URI/URL scheme registration procedures and guidelines have changed over
> time, mainly ignoring the reality that there is little impact in this world
> in having your scheme registered.
> What matters is what you can get implementors to implement or delegate if
> you have the right apps installed on your phone or pad or desktop. There
> are tons of unimplemented schemes in the IANA registry[11]  and tons of
> implemented schemes with no registration.  Wikipedia[12]  is a better
> source.
> 
> Meanwhile, through BCP 35 RFC 4395, RFC 6085, RFC 8615, RFC 7595 and
> others, we've spent a lot of thought on guidelines and processes that don't
> seem to matter.. In retrospect, the differences between "in use" and
>   "registered" weren't due to problems addressed. Provisional registrations
> based on theory without practice are relatively harmless.  If you register
> schemes such as RFC 2324 (which defined the scheme for
> "%E3%82%B3%E3%83%BC%E3%83%92%E3%83%BC") the internet doesn't care   --
> perhaps in future we might use ☕ 😋:.
> 
> [1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/cnrp/
> [2] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc3367/
> [3] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc2972/
> [4] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc3368
> [5] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc3986
> [6] https://url.spec.whatwg.org/
> [7] https://github.com/whatwg/url/issues/479#issuecomment-1231491543
> [8] https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2017/01/30/one-url-standard-please/
> [9] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ruby-url-problem-01
> [10] https://twitter.com/samruby/status/1547646895027146753
> [11] https://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes/uri-schemes.xhtml
> [12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_URI_schemes
> --
> https://LarryMasinter.net  https://interlisp.org
>