4 ms·

So we have all of these implicit URIs: robots.txt humans.txt .well-known/security.txt favicon.ico ads.txt app-ads.txt Am I missing any

by eddieh 6y ago

So we have all of these implicit URIs: robots.txt humans.txt .well-known/security.txt favicon.ico ads.txt app-ads.txt Am I missing any? Part of me thinks that the root index.html should have link or meta tags for any and all of these. HTTP headers would also work. I get that robots.txt and favicon.ico are historical and humans.txt is cutesy, but this is getting kind of polluted. Perhaps I'm missing some obvious reason for why we're still doing the .txt thing?

sedatk 6y ago
That's the purpose of .well-known going forward: prevent pollution and allow access without discovery.
tialaramex 6y ago
> Am I missing any? As is implied by .well-known/security.txt there is in fact a whole registry for such well known URIs living under the /.well-known/ path https://www.iana.org/assignments/well-known-uris/well-known-uris.xhtml https://www.iana.org/assignments/well-known-uris/well-known-... > Part of me thinks that the root index.html should have link or meta tags for any and all of these. HTTP headers would also work. As it is, anything interested in MTA STS can get the associated well-known URL and everything else doesn't care. If we put that into index.html or every HTTP header then everybody is burdened even if they didn't care. > Perhaps I'm missing some obvious reason for why we're still doing the .txt thing? If there's a significant software stack in which you're more likely to get what you expected from foo.txt than from naming it just FOO or foo then unless there is also a significant stack in which foo.txt can't work you'd be crazy to insist on not having the extension. The IETF and W3C do not have enforcement arms, so if they standardise something that's harder to get right, less people get it right, harming its adoption. Sometimes that's just the price you must pay for something that actually delivers on its intended purpose - but often it is not and you should look for the simplest thing that works.

by eddieh 6y ago

sedatk 6y ago

That's the purpose of .well-known going forward: prevent pollution and allow access without discovery.

tialaramex 6y ago

> Am I missing any? As is implied by .well-known/security.txt there is in fact a whole registry for such well known URIs living under the /.well-known/ path https://www.iana.org/assignments/well-known-uris/well-known-uris.xhtml https://www.iana.org/assignments/well-known-uris/well-known-... > Part of me thinks that the root index.html should have link or meta tags for any and all of these. HTTP headers would also work. As it is, anything interested in MTA STS can get the associated well-known URL and everything else doesn't care. If we put that into index.html or every HTTP header then everybody is burdened even if they didn't care. > Perhaps I'm missing some obvious reason for why we're still doing the .txt thing? If there's a significant software stack in which you're more likely to get what you expected from foo.txt than from naming it just FOO or foo then unless there is also a significant stack in which foo.txt can't work you'd be crazy to insist on not having the extension. The IETF and W3C do not have enforcement arms, so if they standardise something that's harder to get right, less people get it right, harming its adoption. Sometimes that's just the price you must pay for something that actually delivers on its intended purpose - but often it is not and you should look for the simplest thing that works.