Talk:Uniform resource identifier

Misleading Venn Diagram in a different way

I spent a while being confused about the three URx's, and I think part of the problem was the Venn diagram which suggests that there's URI's that are neither URNs or URLs. Can anyone give an example of one? Or is it just that that Venn diagram is how it's always been taught (see these examples) but no one knows why?

If no one can give an example here, how about we change the image so it actually matches the article text? Only by reading the article could I overcome my mistaken first impression that there's bare URI's. Then I understood that URI is a general name for anything that's a URN or a URL (or both). --Qwerty0 (talk) 15:15, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Technically that's not even a Venn diagram. It's an Euler diagram. Megakelvin (talk) 09:50, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Noted. Also, I just came across this document published by the "W3C/IETF URI Planning Interest Group" describing the current de facto state of URI definitions. I'm linking directly to the section that summarizes the situation. Note that this comes directly from the top, and while it's not an official policy it's written by the people in the know (i.e. not even just some rando professor's opinion)

I'll summarize their summary. The idea that there would eventually be URI's that are neither URL's nor URN's was at best a theory put forward when the web was still taking shape. This didn't happen and the only types of URI's that came to be standards were URL's and URN's. I think all those Venn (or Euler) diagrams are from that early period when academics first wrote their chapters on URI's.

--Qwerty0 (talk) 17:50, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok seeing as there've been no objections I went ahead and made a candidate replacement diagram:

I'm no Euler/Venn diagram expert (nor an Inkscape ninja, as you can see) but I think this conveys what we're trying to explain, no? I'll probably wait a while again then replace the diagram if no objections.

--Qwerty0 (talk) 06:11, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

If the description of such a simple diagram takes more space than the diagram itself, the diagram seems to offer no value but only confusion. What does the color mean? Why are some lines dotted? Does the "URI" above the "URL~URN pill" offer any additional information? The diagram is neither Venn, nor Euler. If you cannot categorize URI in URL and URN then we should just remove the diagram instead of contributing to the confusion. As long as it is not clear whether URN stands for the Uniform Resource Name as abstract URI type or for the urn: namespace (also described in Uniform Resource Name), the confusion will remain. -- JakobVoss (talk) 22:20, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Right. I only took the effort to remove the part where it implied the existence of URI's that were neither URL's nor URN's. But fixing it further shouldn't be too much of a problem. In order to remove the weird "pill" format, why not go with a more traditional Venn diagram to show the overlap of URL's and URN's? This is just a rough draft I made. I can fancy it up if we decide to use it.

I'm no Venn (or Euler) expert, so I don't know the best way to draw it to show that all URL's, URN's, and both, are in the set of URI's (but there's no URI that is neither).

But I think a visual illustration is key, especially if you notice how confusing it is to read my last sentence. It can be put much more simply in a diagram. And there is so much confusion about this, I think it's important to clearly show the correct situation.

(One last note, I'm linking here the part of the RFC that specifies the relationship. Thanks for the link, Jakob.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qwerty0 (talk • contribs) 21:58, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Syntax and semantics of the file path.

The file path can contain text such as "&NR=1" and "&vq=medium". This should be mentioned with a discussion of syntax and semantics. Regards, PeterEasthope (talk) 15:26, 23 September 2011 (UTC)