Valdis(_dot_)Kletnieks(_at_)vt(_dot_)edu wrote:
On Fri, 02 Jan 2004 13:14:54 +0100, Julian Reschke
<julian(_dot_)reschke(_at_)gmx(_dot_)de> said:
The second statement seems to be misleading. For instance, RFC2396 (URI
syntax) updates previous RFCs that also contained specific URI scheme
descriptions (such as "ftp"). Thus, it doesn't obsolete them. However,
RFC2396 clearly can be used without the documents it's updating.
OK. Maybe I'm just caffeine-deficient today, but I'm totally failing to
understand how you can use the parts of rfc2396 that update the rfc1808
definitions of relative URI's, if you're not using relative URI's as specified
by 1808.
Relative URIs are fully specified by RFC2396, section 5.
Or is your comment addressing the fact that although some sections of 2396 are
dependent on 1808 and are left dangling if 1808 isn't included, that *other*
sections of 2396 are stand-alone and not dependent on it? (i.e. if your
situation doesn't use relative URI's, you can disregard both 1808 and the
update to it)?
No, RFC2396 doesn't rely in any way on RFC1808.
If so, there's likely a little bit of confusion between what the standard
actually specifies (a large number of URI classes), and what any given
application may actually implement. So while for you *as implementor* large
sections of 2396 may be irrelevant, in order to make the *standard* consistent,
it must be dependent on 1808 (otherwise, some *other* coder who *does* have to
worry about relative URI's will get burnt).
Does that clarify things any?
Not at all. IMHO the situation is as follows: RFC2396 completely
replaces all previous definitions of URI syntax and resolution
(including the syntax for relative URI references).
However, previous documents *also* contained definitions of particular
schemes which were not included in RFC2396, thus it doesn't obsolete
these documents. Nevertheless, RFC2396 can be read without reading the
previous documents (unless you happen for instance to be interested in
the "ftp" URI scheme).
Julian
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