On 5/06/2022 10:29, Vinnie Falco wrote:
The decision that I have made is to just ignore the RFC's guidance on what URL means, and instead use the term as it has become popularly known. I believe that the distinction between URL and URI is just not recognized by the general public and in particular the wide audience to which Boost.URL applies. No one asks you for your URI, but everyone asks you for your URL. People put URLs into the address bar. No one says "type this URI into the address bar." The address bar accepts non-http schemes such as mailto and file. These are technically URIs (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailto). But no one calls them that.
file is also an URL protocol, although you're correct that mailto is not. I don't think anyone actually types mailto: addresses into the address bar on a browser, though (nor can I think of any other URIs that someone might manually type, except for things like about:config that are browser-specific). You're correct that the wider public doesn't really understand the distinction, but it does seem a bit weird that you're mixing the terms. Perhaps you should just use URL everywhere, if you don't like URIs?