Re: Version identifier in URL

Larry Masinter (masinter@parc.xerox.com)
Wed, 29 May 1996 16:28:57 PDT


Wait, I didn't see that anyone was proposing to "standardize the
syntax of version identifiers across all servers". After all, most
servers don't even have versions.

> The point is: you can't tell the relationship between address A1
> and address A2 just by looking at their syntax: you need explicit
> information that says one is a version of the other. The Resource
> element is one such syntax.

Separate out the problem of
  a) construct a URL for a previous version of a resource
     given the current version of a resource and information
     about the server's versioning system
  b) determining from two URLs what their version relationship
     might be.

I think it's reasonable to use URL-decoration for (a) and not for (b).

Maybe it's OK if the only way you can accomplish (b) is to retrieve
attributes of the actual resources, and not their URLs.