DISQUS

I authored the HTTP and URI standards, participated in the original HTML 2.0 standardization, produced one of the first WWW client libraries, and cofounded the Apache project. I wrote my dissertation on the Web architecture and spent four years on the TAG explaining it to others and providing input to the webarch document. I have also written findings on the subject and there are at least a thousand archived emails from me on Web architecture, easily discoverable with a google search on w3.org.

Why on earth do you think I need to repeat that background, which should be obvious to anyone working on Web standards, in an email message sent to the HTML working group? The authors of HTML5 haven't even justified the WG goals, let alone developed a coherent architecture. Stop drinking the kool-aid and start thinking about how stupid it would be to repeat all of the IETF discussions on URI and HTTP within a mailing list that is already overloaded by HTML.

The architectural principle is separation of concerns, also known as the principle of orthogonality (orthogonal protocols deserve orthogonal specs). It is central to the Web architecture that identification is independent of (cannot be defined by) data formats. HTML is just one of many data formats on the Web. These are all facts that are not open to debate -- they are decisions that we made over a decade ago and reaffirmed by consensus of the TAG. Whether or not Ian agrees with the architecture is irrelevant.

FTR, it is categorically insane to believe that STD 66 is not "agreed to". It is a full IETF Standard with the full backing of the W3C and all of the vendors that the HTML5 group considers reference implementations. The issue here is not about what STD 66 defines (which is the set of identifier syntax that is entirely interoperable across all Web components) but rather what to do with strings that STD 66 considers invalid when they are encountered in the wild.

My suggestion is to treat them as invalid strings, not claim them as some special identifier to re-brand with the URL name, and thus achieve the same result of specifying browser behavior on invalid input *without* violating an international standard. The only technical difference between the two is that HTML5 will not instruct browsers to send invalid HTTP requests containing invalid URI references in the request-URI.