[OpenID] What is a URL, exactly?
Joaquin Miller
joaquin at netmesh.us
Mon Feb 12 22:47:21 UTC 2007
>(I'm still not sure that there exists today a standard way to
>*resolve* an email address to a URL location, though...so calling an
>email address a "URL" seems inaccurate).
I'm the world's backmost expert on the question: What is a URL, exactly?
So I'll just go ahead and sound off anyway, to keep the discussion rolling.
A URL is "a compact string representation for a resource available
via the Internet [RFC 1738]." (Yes, yes; hold your horses.)
"The term 'Uniform Resource Locator' ('URL') refers to the subset of
URI that identify resources via a representation of their primary
access mechanism (e.g., their network "location"), ... [RFC2396]."
The URI, 'mailto:joaquin at netmesh.us', refers to a resource, my inbox,
via a representation of its primary access mechanism (the <some> mail
protocol, in this case SMTP) and its network location
(<something>.netmesh.us:<something>, in this case,
smtp.netmesh.us:25, a.k.a. 204.145.147.224:25). (These details can
be discovered, I guess, by tracking down the MX record for netmesh.us
(or something like that).)
So: The URI, 'mailto:joaquin at netmesh.us', i s a URL.
Fire away!
Your,
Joaquin
p.s. I write, not as one knowledgeable of all this stuff, but as
one claiming to be able to read what the plain English meaning of a
specification is.
p.p.s Of course, there is a vital difference between what the plain
English of some specification says a URL is and what 'URL' is used to
mean in common parlance. We all know that. Me, i don't know what
'URL' means in common parlance. No idea. All i know is that the
URI, 'mailto:joaquin at netmesh.us', is a URL. To any self respecting spec freak.
p.p.p.s As you all will have read, Phil has treated this subject in
more colorful terms. I agree with him that it does not matter a whit
whether 'mailto:joaquin at netmesh.us' is a URL or is not a URL.
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