In <news:ol2dnro4uvq3axfknz2dnuu7-x3nn...@mozilla.org>, "David E. Ross" <nobody@nowhere.invalid> wrote:
> On 7/16/2016 5:54 PM, »Q« wrote: > > In <news:mrednenyfouavhfknz2dnuu7-whnn...@mozilla.org>, > > "David E. Ross" <nobody@nowhere.invalid> wrote: > > > >> On 7/16/2016 12:35 PM, Paul B. Gallagher wrote [in part]: > >> > >> [snipped] > >> > >>> The chief purpose of the angle brackets is delineation -- to tell > >>> the receiving application "the URL begins here... and ends here." > >>> AFAIK they don't tell it "this is a URL." For that, you need > >>> either an HTML message (which supports hyperlinks), or a receiving > >>> application like SeaMonkey that recognizes URLs and email > >>> addresses and makes them clickable. And yes, including "http://"; > >>> does help some apps in their recognition process. Similarly, many > >>> diagnose mail links whenever they see the character "@" -- > >>> this@that will probably be clickable when SM receives this > >>> message. > >> > >> Actually, the use of the < and > as brackets is for humans. This > >> is so a human user can tell how much to copy and then paste into a > >> browser's address area. > > > > The angle brackets as delimiters for URLs in plain text were > > recommended in the appendix of RFC 1738 because "it is convenient > > to have a separate syntactic wrapper that delimits the URL and > > separates it from the rest of the text" without specifying whether > > it's convenient only for humans. > > I prefer using RFC 3986, which updated RFC 1738. In any case, RFC > 1738 is marked as obsolete. For the question of whether the delimiter was intended solely for humans, not software, I prefer the earlier reference because it's from when the issue was being tackled in the first place. In any case, the one that superseded it is in agreement with it about the delimiters. > The overall context of Appendix C of RFC 3986 seems to indicate a > human use for the brackets. This is seen in the reference to "on > printed paper." in the first paragraph of the appendix. That part is essentially the the same in 1738's appendix; both are very clear that they're talking about all plain text, not just printed on paper. I see no indication in either appendix that the delimiters might be intended only for parsing by humans. 3986: "For example, there are many occasions when a URI is included in plain text; examples include text sent in email, USENET news, and on printed paper." 1738: "In addition, there are many occasions when URLs are included in other kinds of text; examples include electronic mail, USENET news messages, or printed on paper." > > Whether any software's algorithms make use of the delimiters as > > they're determining whether there's a URL present, I dunno. > Yes, however, some software also makes use of the < and >. For helping to determine whether a URL is present? [crossposted and followups set to mozilla.general, since this seems to me to be about trivia rather than SM support.] _______________________________________________ support-seamonkey mailing list support-seamonkey@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
