I have an IRC link to the Web. the browser can connect to an IRC channel
and listen (will soon have send capability, come on guys what do you expect
for a three hour hack at 2am?)
So the question of the URL comes up. My first idea was:-
IRC:#WWW
to join the WWW channel, this soon became
IRC:%35WWW
After I realised that the anchor was a problem...
Then I thought that we should not make the mistakes of the news URL where
the field is not expandable. so instead of just assuming that the only
thing you can read is channel info :
IRC:JOIN/%35WWW
IRC:WHO/%35WWW
etc etc
Then there is the problem of IRC servers, and the EFnet/Undernet divide.
IRC is about as stable and reliable as blammange. So it is essential
to be able to specify servers at random...
IRC://funet.fi/JOIN/%35WWW
But the problem then is of the referentiality of the link we want the user
to go to their `best' server even though theu may have many. What I
did instead was to use logical names EFNET and UNDERNET, and use the urls
as follows:
$EFNET:/JOIN/%35WWW
EFNET = IRC://funet.fi/
The $EFNET is resolved by resolving the logical name (symbol or whatever)
to get the Root URL then doing the standard relativity calculations
(logical, not Lorentz!)...
Comment from the IRC link when I tried this out
`you want to connect IRC to the Web? You're mad'
-- Phillip M. Hallam-BakerNot Speaking for anyone else.