IRIs, URIs, and RFC 2396bis

<PRE>The Atom 0.3 draft [1] states that "Link constructs MUST have a href
attribute, whose value MUST be a URI [RFC2396]" [2].  Should this be
changed to "whose value MUST be a URI, as defined by RFC2396 or its
successor," so that Atom can benefit from RFC2396bis? [3]</PRE><PRE>&nbsp;<=
/PRE><PRE>Alternatively, we could state "whose value MUST be an IRI" [4].  =
After
reading all three specs (RFC 2396, RFC 2396bis, and the IRI draft)<A href=
=3D"http://www.terra.es/personal7/a100006/">,</A>I
am not entirely sure what their relationship is<A href=3D"http://www.terra.=
es/personal7/a100005/">.</A>  RFC 2396bis appears
to obsolete RFC 2396, and IRIs appear to "have a dependency on RFC
2396bis" [5]<A href=3D"http://www.terra.es/personal7/a100004/">.</A>  Curre=
ntly Atom mandates RFC 2396 only.  I do not see
any discussion of this on the Atom wiki [6], and only one passing
mention of it in the list archives. [7]</PRE><PRE>Could someone with more e=
xperience shed some light on this situation?

[1] http://www.mnot.net/drafts/draft-nottingham-atom-format-02.html</PRE><P=
RE>[2] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt
<PRE>[3] http://gbiv.com/protocols/uri/rev-2002/rfc2396bis.html
[4] http://www.w3.org/International/iri-edit/draft-duerst-iri.html
[5] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webarch-comments/2004Feb/000=
1.html
[6] http://intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/UniversalResourceIdentifier
[7] http://www.imc.org/atom-syntax/mail-archive/msg02941.html
</PRE><PRE>--=20
Cheers,
-Mark

</PRE></PRE><BR>
--=20
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