Re: user friendly uri names

[Sander Vesik <sander_traveling yahoo co uk>]

 --- Michael Toomim <toomim uclink4 berkeley edu> wrote: > Daniel Veillard wrote:
> >   Something like "applications://Office/" is especially bad because
> > in an URI interpretation "applications" would be the protocol,
> > "Office" the server to contact for that protocol amd the remaining
> > "/" path would indicate a query for the root resource on that server.
> 
> Yeah, what's the deal?  Conceptually, "applications" is a container (ie. 
> directory) not a protocol, and "Office" is a subcontainer of "applications".
> 
> This should really be something like Applications/Office.  Or maybe 
> /Applications/Office.  Or maybe Gnome/Applications/Office, or at least 
> gnome://Applications/Office or gnome:///Applications/Office (however 
> many slashes you prefer).
> 

uhh... In such a case you would *probably* want to use a URN instead. Admittedly, 
it won't make the syntax be any easier.

> As it stands, the vfs interface is really inconsistent.  The user has to 
> remember that some containers reside in file://, some containers are 
> actually protocols and must be specified with protocol://, and some 
> containers actually live inside of those protocol containers!  Why, dear 
> god?
> 
> Is gnome saying that MSDOS had it right when they assigned all disk 
> drives their own idiosynchratic top-level A:, B:, .. labels?
> 

MSDOS? no, not msdos. but gnome seems to be saying that VMS is the right 
way to go.

> Not to mention that all those slashes and colons are annoying in and of 
> themselves.  Is gnome really forcing users to remember to type THREE 
> forward-slashes?  This is user-friendly how?  So let's see.. the first 
> slash means nothing, the second slash (when used in conjunction with the 
> first slash) signals the end of the the "protocol" section, and the 
> third identical slash means that the next word in the uri will specify a 
> container on the local computer rather than a foreign server.  Should 
> users also be forced to learn C++?  And some uri's (like 
> mailto:foobar foo bar) don't have any slashes at all -- just a colon.
> 

one could easily argue that practicly all of the gnome URIs, both existing
and ones being proposed, should not use teh two extra slashes, as there is 
no remote vs local confiusion possible. You always have just preferences:// 
and never prefernces://snoopy/charley_brown or for that matter 
preferences:///user vs preferences:///system

> I'm saying this from the perspective of not having read rfc2396, because 
> I don't think that gnome's users are expected to read that document either.
> 

Users should never be expected to type in a gnome URI - or even know about them.


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