[whatwg] Web Addresses vs Legacy Extended IRI
Maciej Stachowiak
mjs at apple.com
Mon Mar 23 15:05:07 PDT 2009
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
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