> I disagree. URI's fundamentally have a scheme that specifies > a transport mechanism (mailto, ftp, file, http, etc) followed > by an address. Its part of the spec.
No, it's not part of the spec. URNs (which are certainly URIs) often don't tell you anything at all about transport or location. Consider the standard example given for a URN, an ISBN identifier: urn:isbn:0-395-36341-1 Where's the transport or location there? > "In technical publications, especially standards produced by > the IETF and the W3C, the term URL has long been deprecated, > as it is rarely necessary to distinguish between URLs and URIs." I had no idea that cf-talk was a technical publication. For web developers, the term URL provides a useful distinction from other sorts of URIs, although it may not for the purposes of the technical publications written by IETF and W3C. > It is important to have consistent, permanent and optimally > human readable URI's regardless of whether they are locations > of a web page or some other type of URI. I was going to blindly agree with this, actually, but upon further reflection I have to disagree with this as well. If you revisit the ISBN example above, can you tell from that URN that the book in question is "Websters II New Riverside Dictionary"? I do agree that URLs should ideally be consistent, permanent, and optimally human readable in a way that matches their corresponding content, though. > I suspect that we are splitting hairs here in a way that most > people don't really care about. URL vs URI is largely a > semantic point and doesn't impact the life of most > developers. But given that URI is what is used by most of the > W3C and IETF, I like to try and explain it where possible so > that other developers understand what's coming out of the > standards setting bodies. If you say that URLs are more properly called URIs, that's not semantic hair-splitting, it's an error, in the same way that it would be an error to tell someone they shouldn't say "car" or "truck" or "bicycle", but should instead say "vehicle". When you use the term "URL", you are conveying some information that doesn't exist when you use the term "URI". Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ Fig Leaf Software provides the highest caliber vendor-authorized instruction at our training centers in Washington DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, Northern Virginia, or on-site at your location. Visit http://training.figleaf.com/ for more information! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Upgrade to Adobe ColdFusion MX7 Experience Flex 2 & MX7 integration & create powerful cross-platform RIAs http:http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;56760587;14748456;a?http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/flex2/?sdid=LVNU Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:267174 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
