3 ms·

> If the mail can find its way to the right point, so can this type of URL. What in the world do those things have in common with each other? Mail gets "resolv

by jonknee 14y ago

> If the mail can find its way to the right point, so can this type of URL. What in the world do those things have in common with each other? Mail gets "resolved" over a period of days and involves a small army of people, many with local knowledge. It also frequently fails and needs updated (postal codes change, street names change, etc). > having to look up lat/lon first in order to pinpoint an address on a map seems not convenient at all Who has to look up anything? We're talking about a URL--the software does the lookup and the user just sees the correct map.

Terretta 14y ago
> Who has to look up anything? We're talking about a URL--the software does the lookup and the user just sees the correct map. On the contrary, we're talking about friendly URLs, comprehensible to normals. A human can compose a URL of the format proposed by the example, and have it point to the correct map. With lat:lon URLs, the human would have to geocode their address into lat:lon then compose the URL. However, to agree with one part of your point, software manages to accomplish that today: put in an exact mailing address, and get a pin on a map. Therefore, one can obviously parse an address from a URL, and get the same pin on a map. Best of both worlds: human friendly URLs, while supporting lat:lon for any non-address POI.
- micheljansen 14y ago
  I'm all for friendly URLs, but my point here is that there is no point having URLs that look friendly when they don't work friendly because they are ambiguous. Addresses, in large swaths of the world, are not reliable. Yes, most countries in the world are able to get mail from A to B somewhat reliably over the matter of days, but not always without human intervention. That's not good enough. Having URLS that work "most of the time", just because you want them to look "nice" is engineering masturbation. It doesn't serve the user at all. > put in an exact mailing address, and get a pin on a map. Therefore, one can obviously parse an address from a URL, and get the same pin on a map. Yes, in some places this works... most of the time. In others it doesn't. That's not good enough. Worldwide geocoding is hard. Reverse geocoding is even harder.

by jonknee 14y ago

Terretta 14y ago

> Who has to look up anything? We're talking about a URL--the software does the lookup and the user just sees the correct map. On the contrary, we're talking about friendly URLs, comprehensible to normals. A human can compose a URL of the format proposed by the example, and have it point to the correct map. With lat:lon URLs, the human would have to geocode their address into lat:lon then compose the URL. However, to agree with one part of your point, software manages to accomplish that today: put in an exact mailing address, and get a pin on a map. Therefore, one can obviously parse an address from a URL, and get the same pin on a map. Best of both worlds: human friendly URLs, while supporting lat:lon for any non-address POI.

micheljansen 14y ago
I'm all for friendly URLs, but my point here is that there is no point having URLs that look friendly when they don't work friendly because they are ambiguous. Addresses, in large swaths of the world, are not reliable. Yes, most countries in the world are able to get mail from A to B somewhat reliably over the matter of days, but not always without human intervention. That's not good enough. Having URLS that work "most of the time", just because you want them to look "nice" is engineering masturbation. It doesn't serve the user at all. > put in an exact mailing address, and get a pin on a map. Therefore, one can obviously parse an address from a URL, and get the same pin on a map. Yes, in some places this works... most of the time. In others it doesn't. That's not good enough. Worldwide geocoding is hard. Reverse geocoding is even harder.