Re: [SOLVED] Re: html on Fedora -- looking for "where to go"
Tim wrote:
I used to use the underscore, as it made sense (to me, and other
programmers) as a substitute for a space. But there's two drawbacks:
1. Try explaining to the clueless what an underscore is, and how to
type it. Try doing that again and again, and you get real sick of it.
2. You have the messy combinations of punctuation such as:
Shakespeare_-_The_Taming_of_the_Shrew
Where it'd really be better to collapse all punctuation down to just one
punctuation symbol. That's "better" as in "easier and more
convenient,"
not more lexically correct. Remember these are URIs (i.e. codes), not
general language.
3. If you ever want a URI printed on a newspaper or magazine, whoever
types it may not be able to get an underscore into the text, unless
they're familiar with how their publishing system works. And, even
then, they may fail. Many of them will convert an underscore into an EM
dash, since an underscore is hardly ever desired in print, yet proper
dashes are wanted all the time.
4. Host Names (or 'labels' in DNS jargon) as traditionally defined by
RFC 952 and RFC 1123 may be composed of upper and lower case
characters, numeric characters, and the dash character. RFC 2181
significantly liberalized the valid character set including the use of
"_" (underscore), but it is still a *good idea* to stick to the
traditionally defined characters[¹].
Mixing dashes and underscores in URLs is sloppy looking at best and
confusing at worst, so using the dash because it is well-supported in
host names is a good practice.
¹ http://www.zytrax.com/books/dns/apa/names.html
Regards,
Matthew Roth
InterMedia Marketing Solutions
Software Engineer and Systems Developer