[Zope3-dev] spelling of namespace signifiers

[Steve Alexander]

We started with

   foo/bar.html;ns=view

abbreviated that to

   foo/bar.html;view

and then changed to

   foo/view::bar.html

to appease Opera, and make the filename extension clearly the last part 
of the URL.


However, foo/view::bar.html has two problems:

   1: You have to put a ./ before relative URLs

      ./view::baz.html

   2: The colon is conventionally urlencoded to %3A

      This leads to location bars in browsers looking like

        http://server.tld/folder/container/view%3A%3Aindex.html

      Rather than

        http://server.tld/folder/container/view::index.html

      Although you can type the latter in, and it will work.


I propose that a URL namespace signifier should

   1: Be at the start of a path segment, so as to leave the filename
      extension intact

   2: Use chararacters that are not conventionally urlencoded

The available characters are

  dash  -
  dot   .
  under _

as determined by running this bit of python:

 >>> import string
 >>> import urllib
 >>> urllib.quote([chr(a) for a in range(32, 127)])
'%20%21%22%23%24%25%26%27%28%29%2A%2B%2C-./0123456789%3A%3B%3C%3D%3E%3F%40ABCDEF
GHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ%5B%5C%5D%5E_%60abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz%7B%7C%7D%7E'
 >>>


So, what spellings of a namespace signifier would meet my two criteria?

I'll suggest a few, but first repeat the already rejected ones and the 
current one:

   http://server.tld/folder/container/index.html;ns=view

   http://server.tld/folder/container/index.html;view

   http://server.tld/folder/container/view::index.html

New suggestions:

   http://server.tld/folder/container/view--index.html

   http://server.tld/folder/container/view..index.html

   http://server.tld/folder/container/__view__index.html

   http://server.tld/folder/container/-view-index.html

   http://server.tld/folder/container/--view--index.html


Bearing in mind that it will be relatively rare, and generally 
get-aroundable-if-you-plan-for-it, to have to use this spelling, I'm 
most in favour of the last spelling: --view--index.html.

Any comments?

--
Steve Alexander