Date: Tue, 12 Jul 94 07:01:00 PDT
From: Fisher Mark <FisherM@is3.indy.tce.com>
Subject: Re: questions on URL draft
To: URI List <uri@bunyip.com>
Message-Id: <2E22A759@MSMAIL.INDY.TCE.COM>
Tim Berners-Lee notes in <9407111457.AA01728@www3.cern.ch>:
>22. Remove "#" as a character that is universally reserved, and
> instead only reserve it in http, ftp, gopher, news. [universially
> reserved without much discussion]
>
> unacceptable. Reserved set must be protocol independent as above.
This is something that has bugged me since Dan Connolly's message of a few
days ago. I really hate to think of a naive implementor (i.e. someone not
on the list and not a regular denizen of the Web) who is handed the URI spec
to code from, which under (22) would contain no mention of the '#'
character. As a working software engineer, I also dislike special cases;
they are simply harder to code correctly and extensibly. The best approach
is to reserve '#', with a possible note that as of the writing of the spec
only http, ftp, gopher, and news have defined meanings for the part of the
URI following the '#'.
======================================================================
Mark Fisher Thomson Consumer Electronics
fisherm@tcemail.indy.tce.com Indianapolis, IN
"Just as you should not underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon
traveling 65 mph filled with 8mm tapes, you should not overestimate
the bandwidth of FTP by mail."