Was HTTP ever non-broken? I remember trying hard to get URNs to work, and proposed them for one project. They required a URN resolver, which is entire new set

Was HTTP ever non-broken? I remember trying hard to get URNs to work, and proposed them for one project. They required a URN resolver, which is entire new set of infrastructure. I tried using path segment parameters (I believe the author refers to syntax like 'http://a/b/c/g;x=1/y' http://a/b/c/g;x=1/y' rather than '/key1:value1/key2:value2/'.) At the time (mid-1990s) the tools I used didn't support it, and I never came up with a need for them. Still haven't. The current spec (ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc3986.txt) says that the text after a ';' is a "non-zero-length segment without any colon" and that the contents are "considered opaque by the generic syntax." "[I]n most cases the syntax of a parameter is specific to the implementation of the URI's dereferencing algorithm." Regarding "404 (traditionally “Not Found”) means it was never here. 410 (traditionally “Gone”) means it was once here but is now gone"; the spec says: > [404] The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address. This status code is commonly used when the server does not wish to reveal exactly why the request has been refused, or when no other response is applicable. It doesn't say anything about 404 meaning "was never here", and in fact includes the possibility that perhaps the server doesn't want to give more information.