Tim Bray wrote:
Don't browser and OS libraries dispatch on URI scheme? I guess
it's probably not as easy to extend as adding a new handler for a
new Content-Type, but it's at least possible for a new URI scheme
to start appearing (in email, Web pages, local docs, etc) and for
the user to install an application which registers
Well, yeah, but a lot of the infrastructure is deployed on dumb
devices and, more important, if you stick to existing URI schemes and
use them properly, it All Just Works.
That's ridiculous.
First of all it's not as if HTTP is an optimal or even particularly
efficient way of accessing all kinds of resources - so you want to
permit URI schemes for as many protocols as can use them.
Second, user agents and other tools that use URIs glean valuable
information from the differences between URI schemes, and they do so
without having to negotiate protocol details. Granted you don't want to
make every clue that a UA might benefit from visible in the URI scheme.
But it's silly to say that existing URI schemes are sufficient for all
purposes.
I know it seems like Those Web Guys Hate URI Schemes, and I get tired
of quoting http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#URI-scheme at people, and I
admit being prejudiced by the fact that a high proportion of
new-uri-scheme proposals have historically been poorly-considered
(not all, see RFC4151).
No doubt. Then again, most proposals of any kind are poorly considered.
(And IMHO the advice in the webarch document about URI scheme reuse is,
as kindly as I can put it, so over-simplified as to be incorrect.)
But there's no getting around it: the cost of new schemes is very
high, if you want to be part of the Web.
If you adopt a fairly narrow view of the web, perhaps.
Keith
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