I know what you are saying and part of my mind wants to agree, but
ultimately I still have to say "yes" .html is an implementation detail.
A url is meant to point to a resource and that's it, how that resource
is defined is an implementation detail.
Also, there are plenty of reasons why a single resource (URL) should be
available in multiple content types. That is seldom used these days,
but it makes a lot of sense. Along the same lines there is the somewhat
crazy example of, "what if XX years from now you want that same url to
return something other than HTML?"
I know it is hard to break the habit of wanting to use file extensions
and I admit that I like them for a lot of reasons as well, but at the
end of the day I don't think a .html or .xml file extension will buy us
anything in our urls. I find it more likely that it will only impose
some limitations.
To put it another way, if the urls work fine without the file extensions
when why should we add them?
-- Allen
Matt Raible wrote:
I like file extensions personally, but I don't really have a valid
reason. Maybe because .html is serving up HTML. Is that really an
implementation detail?
On 5/3/06, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
This is a subtopic of the overall discussion about the new url
structure. I think we can make this decision can be made apart from the
general discussion.
My current position is that file extensions should not be used for these
reasons ...
1. as described by this w3c document about choosing urls, it is a best
practice not to include file extensions because the represent an
implementation detail. urls are virtual and do not need file extensions
to be valid. http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI
2. we can't make file extensions work for all urls anyways, so it seems
a little hacky and inconsistent to use them only for part of the url
structure.
3. it is always possible to map the virtual urls into real files in any
way desired. how a url is served up is an implementation detail and
should not affect what the url is.
I didn't copy over the discussion about this that started on the wiki,
but one item that came up was how media files will work. I am not
saying that our media files (gif, jpg, png, etc) can't have file
extensions either, i am only talking about urls to our html and xml
content right now.
So, does everyone agree with that? Does anyone still think we should
use file extensions and why?
-- Allen
