Re: An Anchor attribute question:

Michael Mealling (ccoprmm@oit.gatech.edu)
Thu, 2 Jun 1994 09:52:02 -0400 (EDT)

Daniel W. Connolly said this:
> In message <199406011327.AA06130@oit.gatech.edu>, Michael Mealling writes:
> >After looking over the current spec and picking apart the unstated but
> >possibly implied differences between HREF and URN, I have a question:
> >
> >CAN <A URN="value"> mean retrieve the page that has this Uniform Resource
> >Name once it has been resolved into a URL?
>
> Sounds reasonable.
>
> >Is this the intended meaning and if so can that intended meaning be changed
> >in order to accomodate URN->URL resolution?
>
> Could you rephrase your question in terms of example markup
> and client-server interactions?
>
> Off the top of my head, this seems like a resonable usage:
>
> See <A HREF="ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc822.txt"
> URN="URN:EITF:rfc/822>The Format for Internet
> Messages</a> for more info.
>
> Clients that grok URNs can use the URN attribute, and other clients
> can use the ftp: address.
>
> This still strikes me as something of a hack, but it's a reasonable
> hack in the near term.

My example would be more like this:

See <A URN="URN:IANA:IETF:rfc/822"> The Format for Internet Messages</A>
for more information.

Then the client would take the URN and hand it off to its favorite
URC server and get back a set of URLs (how we represent a set of
choices to the user is another question) which the user can select or
have the client select. Then the client would take the selected URL
and do it's normal operations on it.

I guess my question would be more along the lines of: is the HREF
in your example required or optional?

-MM

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