Media/Device Type Spec???

[Avery Pennarun]

On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 09:43:17AM +0100, Dave Cridland wrote:

> I've been trying to figure out a way to include this kind of 
> information in a URI without breaking existing apps - the closest I 
> can think of is using an otherwise illegal fragment identifier, such 
> as '#?dav?x-svn' or something. Obviously URIs with an existing 
> fragment identifier could break at this point, but my testing so far 
> suggests it won't have any impact on servers, so that's something. 
> This is, of course, a job for the IETF, not us, but it'd be nice if 
> we could come up with a sensible method here to draft up.

Monikers, I'm telling you.

	subversion:dav:whatever

"dav:whatever" can be a valid URI (I don't know if it is, knowing little
about DAV).  "subversion:" converts your current interface context (say, the
one used by your web browser) into the desired one ("I want an object that
can be used by subversion, and I want subversion to use it.")

Essentially, a URI without an interface context is useless.  The "default
interface" requested by your browser makes a decent lowest common
denominator, but if you *really* want standardized-but-helpless URI schemes
that are totally meaningless unless you know what application it was meant
for, yet can't encode that into the URI, then you have to specify the
interface some other way.  Since any amount of arbitrary stuff can follow
the colon, you have to prefix stuff before the colon.

Sorry I broke off our conversation earlier - I've been meaning to write a
longer description that actually describes this in detail.  I'm not totally
kidding when I talk about a UniURI or a UniVFS library, but I have to think
about it more.

Have fun,

Avery