[whatwg] Web Addresses vs Legacy Extended IRI

[Giovanni Campagna]

2009/3/22 Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch>:
> On Sat, 21 Mar 2009, Giovanni Campagna wrote:
>>
>> Now I would like to ask:
>> are there any major differences that requires the W3C / WHATWG to
>> publish an other specification, just for HTML5, instead of just
>> referencing the IRI-bis draft or the LEIRI working group note?
>
> As far as I can tell the LEIRI requirements aren't actually an accurate
> description of what browsers do.

My question was more specific: what are the *techical differences*
betwen LEIRI and Web Addresses?
Can't we have one technology instead of two?

> Note that the Web addresses draft isn't specific to HTML5. It is intended
> to apply to any user agent that interacts with Web content, not just Web
> browsers and HTML. (That's why we took it out of HTML5.)

Unfortunately, languages outside HTML5 (notably XLink, XML Base, SVG,
XForms), that use W3C Schema definition and anyURI type, use exactly
LEIRI.
Other technologies instead use pure URI / IRI (XMLNS, RDF) and I
wouldn't see much benefit in relaxing their syntax (because they never
actually process their identifiers).

> --
> Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
> http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
> Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
>

Giovanni