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Re: [whatwg] New URL Standard from Anne van Kesteren on 2012-09-24 (public-whatwg-archive(_at_)w3(_dot_)org from September 2012)

2012-10-22 18:19:01
On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 3:35 PM, Ian Hickson <ian(_at_)hixie(_dot_)ch> wrote:

The notion that curl, or an HTTP cache manager, or an XML namespace
processor, is going to be routing around errors, strikes me on the face
of it as being wrong.  One of the main uses I put curl to is making sure
I have the URL exactly right before I drop it into chat or whatever.

   $ wget 'http://example.com/a b'
   --2012-10-23 00:27:43--  http://example.com/a%20b

   # test.cgi returns a 301 with "Location: a b"
   $ curl -L
http://damowmow.com/playground/demos/url/in-http-headers/test.cgi
   This file is:
http://damowmow.com/playground/demos/url/in-http-headers/a%20b

Software does this stuff already. We need to make sure it does it
interoperably.


Hmm.  I went to tbray.org and made a file at '$ROOT_DIR/tmp/a b' - note the
space.

Then I did

curl -I 'http://www.tbray.org/tmp/a%20b'
curl -I 'http://www.tbray.org/tmp/a b'

Curl, quite properly, doesn’t fuck with what I ask it, and revealed a very
interesting fact: That my Apache httpd returns 200 for both of these, but,
with, uh, interesting variations, amounting to what I think is quite
possibly a bug.  I also pasted the version with the space into the nearest
Web browser, and it quite properly auto-corrected to a%20b.

I think it’s a bug that curl is claiming the 301 pointed at "a%20b" not "a
b".  Because suppose it had pointed at "a%20b" - I don’t want middleware
lying to me.

It seems like a good idea to document the steps by which "a b" pasted in
becomes "a%20b" in the address bar. But I don’t see the relevance outside
human-authored strings.  -T




On Tue, 23 Oct 2012, Julian Reschke wrote:

This always was about venue, not people. If people want to "fix" or
"augment" URIs/IRIs, they should come over to the IETF.

I think the person doing the work has the prerogative to do it wherever he
or she wants to do it. Maybe the IETF should consider why Anne isn't doing
it in the IETF.


The specs don't define everything that implementations have to do to
be interoperable. If the IETF doesn't think that's a problem, then
that's fine, but then y'all shouldn't be surprised when people who
_do_ think that's a problem try and fix it.

Yes, please fix *that*, but *just* that without messing with the basics
without consensus/review.

Consensus isn't a value I hold highly, but review of Anne's work is
welcome.

If the IETF community didn't want Anne to do this work, then the IETF
community should have done it. Having not done it, having not even
understood that the problem exists, means the IETF has lost the
credibility it needs to claim that this is in the IETF's domain.

You don't get to claim authority over an area while at the same time
telling someone else "please fix that" for the hard work that comes with
that area. The reality is, he who does the hard work, gets the authority.

--
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

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