Re: URL-Reference / "empty URL" question

[Klaus Weide <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, 12 May 1997, Larry Masinter wrote:

> >  <A NAME=link-1" HREF="http://a.host/a.file.html"    >link one   </A>
> >  <A NAME=link-2" HREF="http://a.host/a.file.html#top">link two   </A>
> >  <A NAME=link-3" HREF="#top"                         >link three </A>
> > 
> 
> > (At least with the Lynx code currently under development,) activating
> > ("following") link-1 will result in a new network request.  Activating
> > link-3 will not, but will just change the view of the current document,
> 
> We actually discussed this at length, and came to the design that
> we intended to write, where (as you assert) link-2 is similar to
> link-1 and not link-3, and should cause a new "dereference".
> 
> The way I think of this, link 3 doesn't
> doesn't refer to "the resource at the URL of this document" but really
> "my local copy in this here buffer, file://localhost/blah/".
> 
> I haven't figured out how to make this any clearer in the draft, though.

I found it clear enough - AFTER forcing myself to forget everything
about RFC 1808 and other things (including code)... 
 
> > My reading of the draft is that they do not resolve to the same thing,
> > and that implementing things this way (first "resolve" a given
> > URL-Reference into a "full" URL-Reference with a non-empty absolute
> > URL, then do all further processing with that) actually contradicts
> > the draft - although it probably is used by a lot of implementations.
> 
> Are you sure? I suppose we need to survey interoperable implementations
> to see.

It is just a guess, but it seems likely that all or most things derived
from the CERN/W3C Library would work that way.

   Klaus