First of all I want to state my position. I don't like extensions. I want URLs to identify resources and not a specific file format. I guess according to Ruby I'm a purist. :)
David M Johnson wrote: > > On May 3, 2006, at 4:49 PM, Allen Gilliland wrote: >> I know what you are saying and part of my mind wants to agree, but >> ultimately I still have to say "yes" .html is an implementation >> detail. A url is meant to point to a resource and that's it, how that >> resource is defined is an implementation detail. >> >> Also, there are plenty of reasons why a single resource (URL) should >> be available in multiple content types. That is seldom used these >> days, but it makes a lot of sense. Along the same lines there is the >> somewhat crazy example of, "what if XX years from now you want that >> same url to return something other than HTML?" > > Right. The client sends an HTTP accepts header and the sever uses that > to determine what to send back. Content negotiation. > > I just exchanged a couple of emails with Sam Ruby. He likes the idea of > extensions and uses them in his blogging software, but only to indicate > content type. He says that web purists argue that extensions are not > necessary, but that content negotiation doesn't work in practice. > > Perhaps in XX years, when we're doing what you suggest, content > negotiation will have been fixed. I don't think we need to wait XX years. Which URLs patterns would be broken today if we don't use an extension? I think the common cases are well handled on the web (text/html, text/xml, etc), if not Content negotiation would be dead already. Of course, RSS will always be a problem, but I think it's an issue, the readers just dealt with it. Ian [1] says it's dead, but in fact he's only making a suggestion to retiring it. [1] http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1144794177&count=1 > > And BTW, I'm not arguing for extensions here, just adding a data point > -- I really don't know what the right decision is. > > - Dave > >
