Re: [ADMIN] Lyris upgrade (rfc 1738 and URLs)

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Larry W. Virden (jari.aalto@poboxes.com)
22 Oct 1998 16:50:57 +0300

|Wed 1998-10-21 lvirden@cas.org (Larry W. Virden) list.faq
| From: edward@paleo.org (Edward Reid)
|
| > However, we all missed the correct reference for the list
| > command headers, which is RFC 2369, "The Use of URLs as
|
| I am confused as to how this works. If I submit today an rfc that
| says that mailto URLs should be surrounded by red and green blinking
| icons of bill clinton, does that mean that everyone needs to run out
| and change their code to support that?
|
| RFC's were originally a 'request for comment' on a proposed protocol.
| The idea was to get discussion going on whether something was a good
| idea or not. Then, it was expected, that some formal group would
| create a standard based on the protocol after it had been implemented
| and used for a time, codifying best practices.
|
| What appears to be happening in today's internet environment is that
| as a new rfc is submitted, it is expected that people will change
| the way they do things to match the latest and greatest option. And
| that becomes difficult to do, because one then has to track every RFC
| to see how each one's new or changed standards cause software changes
| to ripple .
|
| I am just trying to understand if what appears to me to be happening
| is indeed the case, or if there is still an expectation that eventually
| someone will be submitting to an IETF or other formal body an official
| standard for URL references.

Coping with RFCs

Generally yes. Sofware all over the world should be modified to follow the
new standards. The culprit in my opinion is the "backward compatibility"
that many RFCs allow. It would be lot easier to cope with standards if they
said "This is the standard, old standard become invalid at date YYYY-MM-DD
(say year from now).", and then fix all old and broken software: Supposing
that there is someone out there to fix them. If there isn't anybody any
more, then the software should be abandoned and moved on to something
newer.

Right now we carry way too old features all over the net.

What is the correct URL format

I was wrong and Edward was right :-) Or should I say that I looked at
outdated RFC. I found yet another pointer rfc2396 (what a co-incidence to
Edward's rfc) Here are the relevant snippet:

This document defines the generic syntax of URI, including both absolute
and relative forms, and guidelines for their use; it revises and
replaces the generic definitions in RFC 1738 and RFC 1808.

This document updates and merges "Uniform Resource Locators" [RFC1738]
and "Relative Uniform Resource Locators" [RFC1808] in order to
>> define a single, generic syntax for all URI.

In practice, URI are delimited in a variety of ways, but usually
within double-quotes "http://test.com/", angle brackets
<http://test.com/>, or just using whitespace

http://test.com/

Using <> angle brackets around each URI is especially recommended as
a delimiting style for URI that contain whitespace.

>> The prefix "URL:" (with or without a trailing space) was recommended
as a way to used to help distinguish a URL from other bracketed
designators, although this is not common in practice.

For robustness, software that accepts user-typed URI should attempt
to recognize and strip both delimiters and embedded whitespace.

So I conlude that <URL:> is still valid, but considered outdated form.

jari

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