W3C | Architecture | Addressing

URI vs. URL

• Concrete question: Which term should HTML 4 spec use? How about the XML specs? and the RDF specs?
• Iana maintains a registry of schemes which includes mid: and cid:. If those are URL schemes, then everything is a URL. Else, what IANA maintains is a UR*I* registry
• Does the process draft cover all URIs or just some? ("URLs" as of Aug 97) (See Roy's page for latest process/syntax draft)
• Does the syntax draft cover all URIs or just some? ( "URLs" as of Aug 97)
• Syntax draft says "URIs are covered by other specs". What other specs?
• HTTP 1.1 (RFC2068, revised draft) uses URI and URL. Cites RFC1630 (informative, by TimBL) and 1737 (informative, requirements doc) for defintion of URI. Discusses URI comparison (section 3.2.3), says "host names MUST be compared case-insensitive" -- does that overlap/conflict with syntax draft? I think it should be SHOULD, i.e. that strcmp() should be a conforming implementation of URI comparison.

My suggestion: the distinction isn't useful in any of these cases; the public knows them as URLs and URL schemes. So we should do a global s/URI/URL/ everywhere.

2nd choice: do a s/URL/URI/ in all the formal specs, begin to educate the public that the list of schemes is a list of URI schemes.