Re: [GNU-linux-libre] [gnu.org #1262331] (inactive Linux distributions)

[Luke Shumaker]

This thread is getting a bit off topic, but...

On Fri, 26 Jan 2018 00:49:33 -0500,
bill-auger wrote:
> i wll mention this next bit for completeness, only because no one else
> has yet; though luke alluded to it (lest this thread go irreversibly off
> topic) - that 'URL' stands for "universal resource locater" and 'URI'
> stands for "universal resource identifier" - that very plainly means
> that they are intended to refer to or identify, unambiguously, the
> single canonical location of a single definitive resource

That is wrong on 2 counts.  A URI is not necessarily canonical, and
it does not identify a location.

A URI identifies a resource... *somehow*.

A URL is a type of URI that identifies the resource by giving a
location for it.  That location is not necessarily unique, and it is
not necessarily canonical.  It's just a location that the resource
can be found at.

For URIs that are not URLs, the client must have a priori knowledge
about where and how to access the identified resource, because the URI
doesn't tell it; for example: "URN:ISBN:0-395-36341-1" uniquely
identifies Webster's II New Riverside Dictionary (1984 edition), but
tells a client nothing about how to retrieve it.  (For all URIs, the
client must have a priori knowledge about how to interpret the URI
scheme used by the URI; the scheme being identified by the bit before
the first colon; a registry of URI schemes is maintained by IANA.)

URIs using the "http" and "https" URI schemes are, of course, URLs.

-- 
Happy hacking,
~ Luke Shumaker