URL critical extensions (Was: draft-ietf-ldapbis-url-04.txt comments)

["Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org>]

At 06:47 AM 12/12/2003, Mark Smith wrote:
>Hallvard B Furuseth wrote:
>>>5.  URL Definition
>>>(...)
>>> If an extension is unsupported by the client, the client MUST NOT
>>> process the URL if the extension is critical.  If an unsupported
>>> extension is non-critical, the client MUST ignore the extension.
>>>
>>> If a critical extension cannot be processed successfully by the
>>> client, the client MUST NOT process the URL. If a non-critical
>>> extension cannot be processed successfully by the client, the client
>>> SHOULD ignore the extension.
>>
>>I'm not sure what the difference is between 'unsupported' and 'cannot be
>>processed successfully'?  These paragraphs seem to say the same thing
>>except that for the final MUST vs. SHOULD.
>
>I suspect the intent was to distinguish between extensions that a client understands but can't process vs. extensions the client is not even aware of.  But now that you mention it, the distinction does not seem important.  I think we can delete the first paragraph.

I would prefer to use language like to that of governing
criticality of controls:
    If the extension is recognized it implementation MUST make
    use of it.  Otherwise (the extension is not recognized),
    the implementation MUST error if critical and MUST ignore if
    if not critical.

Kurt