Re: revised "generic syntax" internet draft

[Edward Cherlin <[e-mail]>]

"Martin J. Duerst" <[e-mail]> wrote:
>On Mon, 7 Apr 1997, Larry Masinter wrote:
>
>> The requirements for "Draft Standard" (which is what
>> I propose for draft-fielding-url-syntax-04) are different than
>> the requirements for "Best Current Practice" (which is
>> what will be proposed by the URL-WG on the URL process.)
>>
>> Between Proposed and Draft, protocol specifications can
>> be changed to accomodate the actual experience of implementations.
>> The proposed wording isn't based on such experience.
[snip]

Look, Martin, Larry wants to see an implementation. Why don't we just give
him one?

We need to be able to take a URL in a specified 8-bit character set such as
8859-X, translate to Unicode, then to UTF-8, then to %HH. Each is a trivial
filter, which I think most of us here could write in grep. Then we can
submit a one line shell script, with examples. Or we could go ahead and
write the whole thing in C. An exercise suitable for a first-year
programming class. We could even pass a program around the Unicode list and
encourage people to create hundreds or thousands of URLs following your
proposal.

OK, Larry, we can give you what you want by next week. What do you say?

--
Edward Cherlin     [e-mail]     Everything should be made
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