On Mon, Jul 20, 2020, at 14:18, Larry Masinter wrote: > I blame RegisterProtocolHandler because before it was really hard to deploy > a new scheme, so it wouldn't matter who owned pizza: I don't agree that registerProtocolHandler is the root cause. That's a symptom of a deeper malaise. I'm running Windows and poked around in my registry a little. The number of entries under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT that specify 'URL Protocol' are pretty shocking. Some use the reverse domain name thing (com.microsoft.print3d:) and others are entirely unqualified (feed: and feeds: appear to route RSS to Outlook; acrobat: routes to Adobe's PDF viewer). I can only conclude that the victim passed long before registerProtocolHandler arrived on scene. The URL as a means of addressing programs and providing context is too useful to leave to the privileged few. That my computer likely has a completely different set of functioning URL schemes to any other is just one of the problems that come from this. But we should not pretend that the IETF has any amount of control over what happens. We have some influence, but that depends on how relevant our response is. Right now, the gap between reality and the registry is largely down to Dave Thaler registering a ton of these (including feed:, above). Relying on Dave is not really a long-term strategy.
