Talk:Data URI scheme

Perhaps someone could add a brief introduction and a link to the "data: URL" page on the main "URL" page?

They are really URIs

Latest comment: 19 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

I think this article should be renamed to data: URI, and replace all references to URL with URI, retaining the historical aspect of them being called URLs. data: URL should be redirected there. Hrvoje Šimić 12:42, 17 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

According to RFC 2397, it is considered a URL, despite the fact that data: is not a locator. For that matter, it isn't really an identifier either; it's more like a container. - Brianiac 19:30, 18 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

It's a tricky issue. Let me try to explain why I think data: scheme URIs should not be considered URLs, despite they being called that in the relevant specification. They are URIs, even if you consider them URLs, since all URLs are URIs. The RFC 2397 calls them URLs, but I haven't found any formal or informal references implying that they should be considered URLs. It's as if the authors didn't know what URIs mean, so they called them URLs. RFC 3986 (see section 1.1.3) and documents from the Technical Architecture Group specify that URIs should not be considered URLs if they are not explicitly used as locators. In particular, URI schemes are not to be classified as specific URL or URN schemes. Hrvoje Šimić 09:38, 21 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

Well, I'm going around clearing up all the articles we have on the topic, and I think we need a standard and uncontroversial naming scheme. Since all URLs are also URIs, I figure that all "URL schemes" are also "URI schemes", so at worst it is "not specific enough" to use the latter. For consistency, therefore, I'm going to rename all the articles about schemes which deserve an article "<scheme>: URI scheme". I'm also going to put in place lots of redirects, because I actually missed this page when searching once, and almost created a new one. I hope no one is "offended" by this, it just seems sensible to be consistent. - IMSoP 22:49, 8 December 2005 (UTC)Reply

Data: URIs in CSS

Just a note on data uri's in CSS. Non-alphabetic characters must be escaped by backslashes. Refer to this bugzilla entry:https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=319779

Disadvantages

Am I correct in thinking that data: does not support specifying http headers such as content-disposition, so suggested names for saving cannot be given, nor transparent gzip compression specified. If that's correct, it should be listed in the disadvantages. Also the lack of content negotiation.