Re: Proposed Text for RFC2445 Issue #1

Eric Busboom wrote:

> On Tue, 3 Oct 2000, John Stracke wrote:
>
> John, you said you didn't feel strongly about this issue :).

Yeah, well...

> >    * A "fetch a file" URL, which includes a filename.  (If it's an http: URL, the
> >      server can also use the Content-Disposition: header.)
>
> Sometimes the URL includes a filename, but it is becoming more common to
> distribute URLs that point into a document management system (I've used
> LiveLink) where the filename is either a node number or is deeply embedded
> in the URL.

Mmm.  Such systems are arguably broken, because the documents being managed can't use
relative URLs to point to each other.  I have no particular remorse over not supporting
them.

> Using Content-Disposition is a good way to do it, but only from the HTTP
> Server's perspective. I think it just moves the responsibility for a
> problem in the calendaring application to a system that is not controlled
> by the calendaring spec.

That's a *good* thing.  We should not be specifying features that already exist.

> > If we introduce FILE-NAME, then the first two cases become problematic: what if the
> > FILE-NAME and the filename derived from the URL don't match? Different
> > implementations will make different choices, and you'll be right back where you
> > started.
>
> Clients will only make different choices if the specification does not
> indicate which choice to make.

Excuse me while I laugh hollowly.

Example of a category of client that will not follow the FILE-NAME spec: one that already
exists.

More generally, any time we have to introduce rules like this to clear up an ambiguity,
we can be certain that we're making a mistake.  It is better to make sure that it is not
possible to construct an ambiguous message.

--
/==============================================================\
|John Stracke    | http://www.ecal.com |My opinions are my own.|
|Chief Scientist |=============================================|
|eCal Corp.      |If all the world's a stage, I want to operate|
|francis <at> ecal.com|the trap door.                               |
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