From: ccoprmm@oit.gatech.edu (Michael Mealling)
Message-Id: <199312032222.AA01961@oit.gatech.edu>
Subject: Re: Minor clarification on url: prefix
To: uri@bunyip.com
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 93 17:22:03 EST
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.87.9312030832.B19105-0100000@norman.nwnet.net>; from "David Robison" at Dec 3, 93 8:33 am
David Robison said this:
> "Retrieving the National Information Infrastructure Documents"
> EFFector Online 6(5) (November 15, 1993) <URL:ftp://ftp.eff.org/
> pub/Eff/Newsletters/effector6.05>. Find out how to get copies
> of the Clinton Administration's National Information
> Infrastructure reports, press briefings, and more. This fact
> sheet lists the multiple paths of access currently available via
> Gopher, FTP, Email, and BBS. - DFWR
>
> Wilson, David L. "Near-Disaster on the Internet" The Chronicle of
> Higher Education 40(13) (November 17, 1993):A26-27, A29. A patch
> for a security whole in common Unix network software was recently
> released by the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT). The
> patch should be installed on Unix machines that are connected to
> the Internet to protect them from unauthorized access.
> Information on the fix is available from <URL:ftp://cert.org/pub/
> cert_advisories>. - DFWR
>
> _________________End of reprint__________________
> As I mentioned, the inclusion of URLs in this way has not caused any
> problems that I have heard of.
>
> David
That's what I want!
1) It doesn't look ugly.
2) You know where is starts.
3) You know where it ends.
4) You know EXACTLY what it is.
Now, someone is going to say that that above is free text and that you
need that because it's not in context. I say horse hocky. That's not
free text up there. That's an HTML file on my server. Where's the
context?
If I'm a little bit stream robot somewhere looking at wires and I see
<A HREF="ftp://blabla> I'm going to have to remember that that is
a URL as well as <URL:bla> is a URL. That breaks the functional specification
as readily identifiable.
Now, the issue of " if you just have URL: how do you know
what the end is?" keeps coming up. That's what "<" and ">" are for. I
don't care what two characters they are. URL: is the URI identifying tag
whereas "<" and ">" are the wrappers.
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