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Re: Paul has volunteered (was Re: Overloaded URIs must GO!)

• From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>
• To: "'XML Dev'" <xml-dev@i...>
• Date: Mon, 31 May 1999 12:47:59 -0500

Jonathan Borden wrote:
> 
> Paul Hunter wrote:
> 
> > Using HTTP for URIs sounds intrinsically <em>bad</em> to me.  ...
> 
>         Aside from the evident fact that such practice goes against several
> individial's internal sense of what is 'right' or 'wrong', this is the only
> criticism I see of this practice. No one has offered a hard or practical
> example of an actual problem this creates, aside from offending of the
> sensibilities.

Well, the first problem is that it is wrong: it is in violation of IETF
specifications about the semantics of http: URLs. Personally, I think that
standards incompliance should be argument enough.

The second problem is that some people put retrievable documents at the
other end of the namespace URI and other people do not. Some people think
that it is a good idea and others think it is the worst possible idea.

There is no way to tell from the URI whether you are supposed to be able
to retrieve something or not. If you try it and get a 404, you don't know
if the document is temporarily missing or if it never existed at all. 

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

Alabama's constitution is 100 years old, 300 pages long and has more than
600 amendments. Highlights include "Amendment 393: Amendment of Amendment
No.  351", "Validation of Laws Regulating Court Costs in Randolph County",
"Miscegenation laws", "Bingo Games in Russell County", "Suppression
of dueling".  - http://www.legislature.state.al.us/ALISHome.html

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    • From: "Jonathan Borden" <jborden@m...>

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