Hello all,
23.06.2011 14:16, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
On 2011-06-22 06:39, Mykyta Yevstifeyev wrote:
(1) There seems to be consensus that registering this URI as a
mechanism for accessing built-in functionality and configuration
information such as application information, preferences, or
settings. (Text derived from the Abstract with "configuration
information", which may mean more to some readers, added and
"easter eggs" dropped. Dropping "easter eggs" reflects other
comments on the list and my opinion that it isn't worth the
trouble to define.
With regard to easter eggs I have no strong position. If it is
troubling, I don't object to remove any mention of them from the
document.
The easter eggs are mentioned only in non-normative parts of the
document, including the abstract and examples, and just reflect the
reality of what some implementations use about URLs for. I do not
understand the objection.
As I've already mentioned, I have no any strong position regarding
"easter eggs". Yet, my opinion is that mentioning them clarifies the
usage of about URIs a bit.
(2) The document itself reflects an attempt to define the
undefinable. There is no cross-implementation interoperability
issue here; if anything, the document should me more clear that
it would be stupid to assume it. The document, nonetheless,
tries to define what is done with some specific URIs in some
places and then has to turn around and indicate that they may be
used in entirely different ways in other places and should not
be relied upon. In the process, it skips back and forth between
being descriptive and being normative, with some definitions
becoming circular in the process. That just isn't a good
combination and some of it actually looks pretty silly.
This feedback is not helpful, as it just vague hand waving and
dismissive.
I wouldn't say so; this remark is quite reasonable. In our section
dedicated to categorization we try to normatively specify how about URIs
are resolved due to the categories we try to create; ibidem we sometimes
give no clear description of related issue. Eg., suppose I write my
browser, YevstifeyevBrowser, which uses the about URI about:bad-guy. I
then claim it as "reserved" and, according to our draft, any application
which is compatible to it must resolve it to what I want. Suppose
another browser, FooBrowser, makes use if about:bad-guy as well, but for
other purpose; but, being compatible with our spec. it can't. The issue
is impossibility to rule out which is a priori used internally only and
is implementation-specific. Another instance. Some application may
treat some about URIs as resolvable while other as unresolvable. Eg.,
FooBrowser may resolve "unresolvable-as-per-HTML5" about:legacy-compat
to the page saying it is unresolvable etc.
I may partly agree with you. Reading the document for a number of times
I've also noticed this. A logical conclusion of everything
aforementioned is below.
"about:blank" is particularly troubling in that regard because
the text essentially says that it is reserved except where it
isn't.
Nonsense. "about:blank" is clearly defined as reserved, and nowhere
does it indicate otherwise. Perhaps you are confused where it
excludes variations that include query strings?
"about:blank" is a special case which is one of the rare instances of
what is acceptable by almost all browsers. As for queries - I've
checked several browsers for their behavior. Firefox 5.0 -
about:blank?aa is treated about:blank. Chrome 12 - the same. IE8
treats about:blank?aa as invalid URI returning "going to web page
canceled". Opera 11 - as FF. Finally, Safari 3.2.1 has the same
behavior. I see the majority of contemporary browsers treat about:blank
with query component as if it isn't present. I personally see no point
in reserving the about URI with no query only.
Option 2: Really try to make this normative wrt some subset of
URI values. In this approach, stop the extremely confusing
circling around.
The circular definitions have been resolved in the editor's draft.
https://github.com/josephholsten/about-uri-scheme/blob/master/draft-holsten-about-uri-scheme-07.txt
I, as one of the editors, is a bit confused by this draft. It
incorporates none of changes I proposed and made after you made it
available. My editor's version is from June 14, not April 13, when this
file was uploaded.
Indicate explicitly that "about" URIs have been used enough and in
enough different circumstances that no application should assume
that an "about" URI, if encountered, is actually its own and that
due caution needs to be taken about non-conforming implementations.
That's the whole point of the unreserved category.
Then explicitly reserve, not only"about:blank", but everything the
authors think is worth listing in Examples _and_ create an IANA
registry for more of them.
No. The registry is a completely unnecessary bureaucratic mess that
I'm strongly fighting against, and will most likely be removing from a
future draft. Mykyta added mention of it to the draft* against my
wishes after I allowed him/her
I'm male, FYI.
to become an editor even though (s)he has still not been able to
provide justification for why such a registry is necessary. (However,
I allowed the draft to be publicised with it for public review and
comment.)
* Note: That change hasn't been checked into github, and I don't know
if Mykyta has those changes somewhere public yet.
I have no access to Github but I've sent you the latest edited version
of the draft in email on 14 June, if you remember.
The purely informative value of a registry can and has already been
achieved by Wikipedia. The three known reserved about URIs (blank,
legacy-compat and scrdoc) are already documented, as are many other
unreserved, but recognised application-specific URIs.
Beyond that, the whole concept of reservation only exists to give
other specifications a clear way to define about URIs for their own
purposes and doesn't need any formal registration process. It doesn't
have any impact on any implementations that are not implementing the
given specification.
Considering the controversy of this question, I think we may put it
aside for a time. Anyway, when the document is published, we can add
the registry if there is a necessity; please note that my justification
for the registry was ongoing comments on its necessity during Last Call,
so IMO, of course, "he has still not been able to provide justification
for why such a registry is necessary" is probably untrue.
Actually, I have some concerns about section on resolving about URIs. I
understand what I propose below surely does not fit in what we have in
the current draft and, mainly, its concepts. However, were I to decide
myself, I would fully rewrite the document is the following way. First,
the intended status would be Informational. Syntax would be left in the
current form. More important the semantics probably are. I'd mention
that (1) 'about' URIs are used internally only, so any application is
free to resolve it to any resource with any semantics, except the
several instances, defined below as "special-purpose 'about' URIs",
which are permanently reserved for use in a specific manner; (2) a
special-purpose 'about' URI as an 'about' URI using a particular
well-known segment and which is defined to be used for a specific
purpose and MUST be used only and only as defined in a specification of
such URI; (3) categorization into "resolvable/unresolvable" would be
eliminated; (4) provisions regarding recognition of the URIs would be
almost the same. Encoding considerations would be that about URIs may
contain characters from UCS first encoded with UTF-8; those UTF-8
encoded characters which do not fit in the RFC 3986 definition for
<segment> or <query> SHALL be percent-encoded within corresponding
part. Then a registry for special-purpose 'about' URIs would be
created. For a number of now-in-use, though not special-purpose,
'about' URIs the reader would be pointed to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/About_URI_scheme
I'd like to seek the current editors' opinion on the proposed approach
above. IMO, such description is (a) clearer and (b) removes a number of
controversial issues.
the document should be really clear that all that the use of
"about:" really tells someone is that it is application-specific
and that a particular implementation of a particular application
may do whatever it pleases with them.
It still says that, though the way it is written is a quite ambiguous
and convoluted and I understand the confusion here. I'll rephrase the
section on recognised URIs to address this.
See my proposal above.
Smaller issues:
(i) Section 6, Normalization, sadly really doesn't belong here
unless the authors can show that everyone interprets "about:"
according to those rules. Otherwise, it would be better to say
that the URI is interpreted in an implementation-specific way
and that implementations would be well-advised to conform to
normal URI syntax rules unless there is a strong reason not
Agree here. This thread restarted with the response to Boris's comment
regarding Gecko's normalization rules. This was to claim that no unified
rules for the scheme which is a priori used by the applications on their
own. As I proposed below, if no document is to be written, the template
may contain such statement about implementation-specific normalization
rules.
Yes, normalisation requirements will be removed.
Probably they aren't to be removed but rather mentioned as
implementation-specific.
(ii) IMO, Section 7, Security Considerations, should be modified
to include an explicit statement that, since these things are
intended for convenience use within an implementation of an
application, passing them between systems (embedded in files or
otherwise) is very risky behavior and should generally be
discouraged except, possibly, in documentation contexts.
I agree here.
...
Section 4 is what is also questionable. This issue was raised during
Last Call and I think can be resolved by saying that an about URIs may
contain UTF-8 encoded characters in the <segment>, as suggested by RFC
3986 and that's all.
Mykyta, feel free to revise sections 4 and 7 as you see fit.
All the best,
Mykyta Yevstifeyev
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf@xxxxxxxx
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf