Re: HTML 2.0 LAST CALL: URI vs URL

David - Morris (dwm@shell.portal.com)
Fri, 2 Jun 95 20:47:37 EDT

On Fri, 2 Jun 1995, Daniel W. Connolly wrote:

> In message <Pine.SUN.3.90.950601171518.26616B-100000@jobe.shell.portal.com>, Da
> vid - Morris writes:
> >
> >Since complaining about inconsistent usage or URI and URL in earlier
> >versions of the draft, Dan has cleaned things up (thats good) and
>
> Section 7, "Hyperlinking" needs more work. I kinda made up my own
> definition of "anchor" and I need to go back to using the old
> Dexter model definition. I was dazed and confused. Sorry.
>
> >I have read the URI and URL RFCs (thata bad?).
>
> Note that the URL RFC, 1738, is standards track, whereas the "URIs as
> used on the web" RFC, 1630, is informational. HTML 2.0 cites 1738
> normatively, and 1630 informatively. Hence HTML 2.0 provides its own
> definition of the term URI. As a happy conicidence, it matches the
> definition in 1630 (at least it will before I'm done -- I got the
> fragment identifier stuff wrong.)

I missed the info vs. std distinction ... sorry ... but our standard
will use a term which is defined in an informational RFC and while
I acknowledge that this can be made right by defining URI in the HTML
std, this will be confusing if you can't match RFC 1630 and yet
include it as an information reference. I don't yet understand
how the words and BNF on page 24 RFC 1630 can be interpreted to
not mean that the URI would include url: as a prefix as my
original post cited below shows.

> >A URL is one kind of scheme of a URI. Hence,
> >
> >URI: url:http://www.w3.org/somepage.html
> >and URL: http://www.23.org/somepage.html

If a URL is not distinct from a URI having two terms which mean the
same thing is confusing at best and frankly makes me seem like a
real non-expert when I try and tell clients that we have two
terms for the same thing. All the VENN diagram suggested to me
was that we had some url methods someone was to lazy to register
so we don't have name space uniqueness.

Common practice is to call these things URLs. Let RFC 1630
simply be informational defining what is now a deprecated term
and go with URL as the term.

On the other hand, if I'm the only person who has been confused
by the two terms, lets move on quickly.

Dave Morris