Subject: Re: [Uri-review] ACTION-103 Follow up on the about: scheme Registration

From: Lachlan Hunt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:33:35 +0100

Joseph A Holsten wrote:
> The suggested text sounds fine, but I'm not sure I understand the
> expected behavior of reserved but unresolvable "about" URIs.
>
> On Sep 18, 2009, at 8:12 AM, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>> The revised text I've suggested for section 5 is as follows: [...]
>> 5.1 Reserved "about" URIs [...]
>> Other specifications MAY reserve additional "about" URIs.
>> Applications attempting to resolve reserved "about" URIs that are
>> not defined to be resolvable, MAY treat such URIs as being
>> unreserved.
>
> Doesn't this defeat the purpose of reserving an unresolvable about URI?
> If applications can treat unresolvable "about" URIs (such as
> about:legacy-compat) as unreserved, what exactly is being reserved for
> them?

(Sorry for the late reply, it seems I forgot to respond earlier.)

The purpose of reserving a URI is so that other specifications can't 
suddenly redefine the URI to return something that is unneeded or 
unwanted by the spec that originally reserved it.  The main use is for 
about:legacy-compat, which needs to be reserved in HTML5, but which 
should never be formally defined as resolvable to anything specific.

We don't want, for example, another specificaiton in the future suddenly 
defining that about:legacy-compat should resolve to some sort of 
unofficial HTML5 DTD.  But we still want to allow browsers to return 
something useful to a user that enters it into their address bar.  e.g. 
Some sort of informative page explaining why the URI can be used in the 
DOCTYPE, which would be more useful and user friendly than the error or 
blank page that browsers return today.

Finally, can you please give an update on when you will be publishing a 
new draft, and continuing with the URI registration process?

-- 
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/