Re: Monastery URLs don't need double slashes!

[footpad]

Actually, if you take a look at RFC 2396, which outlines the structure of a URI, you'll note that mailto: and news: are exceptions to the general rule regarding schemes. While Section 3 does say "The URI syntax does not require that the scheme-specific-part have any general structure or set of semantics which is common among all URI", I think you'll notice that the next sentence offers a bit of advice:

However, a subset of URI do share a common syntax for representing hierarchical relationships within the namespace. This "generic URI" syntax consists of a sequence of four main components:
     <scheme>://<authority><path>?<query>
each of which, except <scheme>, may be absent from a particular URI.

Since the prefix tags are meant to fit within our own namespace, I don't see any harm in keeping them consistent with the majority of generally-supported schemes listed in Section 1.3.

After all, if you're used to typing "://" as part of your UR(I|L|N)'s, why invent an alternate syntax for our local schemes? Consistency can be a good thing, after all.

So, I vote 'No.' Sorry...

--f

P.S. BTW, Appendix B of that same RFC offers an interesting discussion for anyone trying to use regular expressions to parse URI's. Of course, I imagine that URI-1.17 (among others) would be helpful, too. :-)

[chip]

Well, I think the author of that RFC was observing a pattern, not prescribing a rule. Rules should only be applied where they are in some way beneficial; and frankly I see no benefit to using three punctuation marks where one would suffice.

As Larry said once: "It's not really a rule; it's more of a trend."

UPDATE: Note also that the RFC shows (just below the bit that you quoted) that the "//" punctuation only appears before an "authority" (e.g. hostname). For example, the "file:" URI scheme doesn't use "//" for URIs of filenames that have no specified hostnames. Therefore, even the given RFC doesn't call for universal use of "//".

    -- Chip Salzenberg, Free-Floating Agent of Chaos

[demerphq]

I once saw an interview with T. Berners-Lee the author of the original, and most subsequent, spec(s) for URLs/URIs (they started with the WWW in RFC 1630 ). When asked if he had regrets he laughed and said (paraphrased to the best of my recall)

Yes. I really wish I hadn't made urls start with a double backslash.

Yves / DeMerphq
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