Re: [boost] Filesystem Library mini-review

From: Sean Parent (sparent_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-01-05 14:35:01

on 1/5/03 10:21 AM, Beman Dawes at bdawes_at_[hidden] wrote:

> I had a conversation with Bill Plauger, Howard Hinnant, and several other
> library implementors at the last C++ committee meeting, and we agreed on a
> possible approach to the conversion problem. Conversions between wide and
> narrow names has always been the hold up. No one has been willing to step
> forward and say "Of all the possible ways to do the conversion, here is how
> libraries should do it."

Rather than using simple path specifier (which I think are a very limited
way to refer to a local resource) - why not make the path syntax be URI
based? There is already a W3C proposal for extending URIs to be fully
international friendly (IRIs) - <http://www.w3.org/International/iri-edit/>.
This would also allow for relative references, remote references,
authentication, versioned file systems (such as WebDAV
<http://www.webdav.org/>), and query references to database file systems.

I would rather see going with an existing standard than inventing yet
another way to refer to resources with international names.

Sean

-- 
Sean Parent
Sr. Computer Scientist II
Advanced Technology Group
Adobe Systems Incorporated
sparent_at_[hidden]