[rfc-i] URL Issue, was Re: draft-iab-streams-headers-boilerplates-07.txt

["Martin J. Dürst"]

On 2009/04/10 2:53, Joe Touch wrote:

> Lars Eggert wrote:
>> On 2009-4-9, at 19:30, Joe Touch wrote:
>>>      http://www.rfc-editor.org/info?rfc=2468
>> This exposes implementation details that I'd rather see hidden for a
>> permanent URL.

I agree that for a permanent one, / is more appropriate.

> Both / and ? expose implementation details. It's not easy to implement
> either with the other.

On an average server (e.g. Apache), it's dead easy. Probably about three 
lines with mod_rewrite, a few more if you do it as a CGI, depending on 
what language (Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby,...) you use.

In general, I'm against prescribing too much implementation detail.
But URIs aren't an implementation detail, URIs are *public interfaces*.
Being able to say "You can always find the latest status of an RFC at
http://foo.bar/baz/rfcXXXX." is very strongly different from saying
"There's an URI where you can figure out the latest status of RFCXXXX,
go figure."

That's why I would prefer to just tell them "that's it", but if we 
really cannot go there, then at least tell them: Decide once, keep it 
"forever". If I were the RFC editor, I'd frankly prefer clear 
instructions, too.

Regards,    Martin.

> I was giving it as a counterexample, a reason to let the RFC Editor
> specify the URL to be inserted, rather than to force them into a
> particular implementation, since they have to maintain it anyway.
>
> Joe
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-- 
#-# Martin J. Dürst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp