Re: [Monotone-devel] url schemes

[Markus Schiltknecht]

Hi,

Philipp Gröschler wrote:
> Have it look like
>
>   http://venge.net/branch?net.venge.monotone

That would be fine, if all servers were clever ones. But there are
pretty dumb ones out, and I'd like to support them as well. Preferably
with the same syntax.

> and the parsing on client side should be fine.

Parsing on the client side is not a problem: we have that under our
control. As well as the clever servers.

> As this would be a problem for CLI use, just
> encapsulate the URL in quotation marks. BASH and (T)CSH work fine with
> this, I just tested that. Try on your konsole if
>
>   echo "http://www.xyz.org?abc&efg=1234";
>
> is working, while
>
>   echo "http://www.xyz.org?abc!efg";
>
> should result in error.

More as a side node, because it's not my major concern in this discussion:

  echo http://www.xyz.org/branch/net.venge.monotone

works and doesn't even need quoting.

> I think the approach of only using slashes in the path of an URL is
> mostly used to obscur the structure of a web application.

I disagree, but I guess that's a matter of taste. I just happen to like
RESTful APIs (which are not just about the syntax of the URL, but
involve usage of GET/PUT/DELETE http commands).

In our case, however, it's about supporting dumb servers, which cannot
really handle URLs with parameters.

> It makes it
> not very easy for the user to tell at which point there is code envolved
> (servlets, etc) or where there is a relative filesystem path, or
> whatever other resource you can guess of. But I am straying from the point.

I'm arguing that most users don't care, where exactly code is involved.
Heck, code is involved everywhere, it's just a matter of "what does the
code do".

Most users just recognize things which look like a URLs, so they expect
to be able to type it into their browser.

Regards

Markus