Posted by John Dunlop on 12/05/06 15:18

Janwillem Borleffs:

> http://www.pierobon.org/iis/url.htm

Whoever wrote that page was confused. Every sentence is misleading or
wrong. For example,

1. 'An Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is the term used to identify an
Internet resource'
URLs are identifiers but this is not what separates them from URNs.
And it is not the term 'URL' but the URL itself that locates a
resource.

2. 'An Uniform Resource Name (URN) is the term used to identify an
Internet resource, without the use of a scheme'
All URIs, and therefore URNs, have scheme names. The author conflates
scheme names with protocols.

3. 'An Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is used by a browser to
identify a single document'
Or by any other application to identify any other type of resource.

4. '[URIs can be] specified in a single line of text'
Why say this?

5. 'An URL refers to a Web page, including the scheme, but without a
name location'
("Name location" is what this author calls fragment identifiers.) URLs
_can_ contain fragment identifiers.

6. 'URL is now used as the generic term'
The reasoning is flawed.

--
Jock

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