----- Original Message ----- > From: "Brion Vibber" <[email protected]>
> On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 3:37 PM, Jay Ashworth <[email protected]> wrote: > > While the topic of "how Mediawiki handles URLs" is on the table, let > > me point out today's Slashdot piece, which notes that ICANN is about to open > > up the gTLD namespace... > > > > *to everyone*, not just commercial registries. > > > > Contemplate, if you will: > > > > http://apple/ > > > > How will MW handle a FQDN with no dots in it, when that becomes > > legal? > > Those are already perfectly legal hostnames to have in URLs, and you see > single-part hostnames all the time on internal networks, either by eliding > the local domain part (since local DNS will resolve it) or by only using > single-part names to begin with. > > For a common example: try linking to http://localhost/ -- it works > just fine. :) Sure. And http may not be the best example. There's lots of code out there -- email address verifiers, for example -- that *requires* a dot in a hostname. > I suppose "in theory" having "apple" available is no worse than "apple.com" > (since you *could* have an "apple.com.mylocaldomain" already and have > to worry about which takes precedence), but in practice that sounds like > a crappy thing to do. :) And you make an excellent point I hadn't gotten to yet: collisions between such dotless FQDNs and internal hostnames are *much* more likely - especially since the Usual Suspects in both namespaces are related so closely. In practice, though, localhost and hosts on your lan -- in which case the DNS lookup is *actually* often a dotted FQDN anyway by virtue of the DNS resolver search facility -- are about the only places dotless FQDNs are generally seen... and lots of code "protects" you from them. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink [email protected] Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
