[whatwg] Web Addresses vs Legacy Extended IRI

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Mar 23, 2009, at 2:25 PM, Ian Hickson wrote:

> On Mon, 23 Mar 2009, Julian Reschke wrote:
>>
>> However, what seems to be more likely is that one tool refuses to  
>> fetch
>> the file (because the URI parser didn't like it), while in the other
>> case, the tool puts the invalid URL on to the wire
>
> IMHO this is basically the definition of a standards failure.
>
>
>> I think this is totally ok
>
> I think considering this behaviour to be ok is basically ignoring 19  
> years
> of experience with the Web which has shown repeatedly and at huge cost
> that having different tools act differently in the same situation is  
> a bad
> idea and only causes end users to have a bad experience.
>
>
>> If the consequence of this is that invalid URLs do not interoperate,
>> then I think this is a *feature*, not a bug.
>
> I fundamentally disagree. Users don't care what the source of a lack  
> of
> interoperability is. Whether it's an engineering error or a flaw in  
> the
> standard or a flaw in the content is irrelevant, the result is the  
> same:
> an unhappy user.

I largely agree with Ian's perspective on this. The primary purpose of  
standards is to enable interoperability, therefore failure to  
interoperate is by definition a standards failure (either in the  
design of the standard or in correct implementation of the standard).

Regards,
Maciej