Re: E-mail Address as Web Page URL

[Peter W <peterw@usa.net>]

On Wed, Mar 07, 2001 at 08:09:03AM -0800, Darryl Rubarth wrote:
> 
> The basic URI protocol is as follows.
> 
> 	protocol://<user>:<password>@<host>/<url-path>
> 
> The HTTP protocol doesn't currently utilize the 'user' and 'password'
> elements and therefore do not pass this information to web servers.

> I currently have no plans to discuss this at the IETF meeting.  I do believe
> there is tremendous value in broadening the http protocol to allow for use
> of the user and password elements, as does the FTP protocol.

Netscape and IE have honored user:password in URLs for *years*. They'll pass
the user/pass along in HTTP Basic authentication. There have historically 
been some glitches, like handling values with spaces, but they've basically 
supported it. I believe your characterization of URIs is quite incorrect, 
but I don't care enough to double check the URI RFC for you. Suffice it to 
say that HTTP URLs are instances of the more general URI scheme.

As for "broadening the http protocol", well, if you want to do that, join
the appropriate IETF working group, start a discussion, and write an RFC. I
suspect you haven't done that because you have a good idea how much IETF
WG's dislike ideas that are encumbered by intellectual property laws. 
They'll accept encumbered contributions only in certain situations, and 
generally you need to be scratching a much bigger itch (say, public key 
exchange) than your idea seems to be dealing with. Thank goodness.

What does this have to do with LDAP, again?

-Peter