A small idea about java API for URI

[John Hax]

The contest seems very interesting, but I don't know whether I can
make a complete proposal.
Here is just my story and my idea.

Last weekend I was writing my own URI implementation in JavaScript
because there is no standard library in JS. (Oh, I'm a web developer
not a pure Java guy :) I need to design an API for my URI class, so as
usual, I use java API for reference. After one day hard work, I
finished a clone of java.net.URI class in JavaScript. But I noticed
that the documentation of java.net.URI says there are some deviations
from the spec so I decide to read the spec (RFC2396) to check it.

To my surprise, I found RFC2396 has been obsoleted by a new standard:
RFC3986. It introduces many changes, for example, it doesn't use
terms "scheme-specific-part", "opaque URI" any more; the definition of
"absolute URI" has been changed (or clarified); some markers (such as
! *) have been moved from unreserved category to reserved category; it
also include the clarification of empty path, relative reference, the
resolution of the URI reference...All those improvements make
java.net.URI outdated and not standard-compliant. The API for URI
should be redesigned according to the latest standards, we may
introduce a new URI class and mark the old java.net.URI deprecated. We
also need some subclasses of URI for normal schemes, such as URN,
HttpURI, FtpURI, FileURI...for scheme-specific operations (for
example, it will introduce extra rules for equality and
normalization), and AbstractURI class for building a new scheme. It
also be very nice to implement a superset of URI, that is IRI, as
RFC3987. (The docs of .NET System.Uri class says it implements the IRI
within Uri class.) Finally, because URIs are just identifiers, and it
has been the infrastructure of the most systems, so it may be not
proper to put URI classes in java.net package. I think it should be
java.util.URI.

So, that's my small idea, redesign and implement URI/IRI classes, move
them to java.util package and mark the old java.net.URI deprecated.