[Bitcoin-development] BIP21 bitcoin URIs and HTML5

[Bitcoin-development] BIP21 bitcoin URIs and HTML5

[Mike Hearn]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1892 bytes --]

HTML5 allows web apps to register themselves for handling URI schemes, such
as the bitcoin: URI that is already in use and being extended as part of
the payment protocol.

The bad news is that for security reasons there is a whitelist of
acceptable schemes in the spec:

http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/timers.html#dom-navigator-registerprotocolhandler

The good news is that yesterday I talked to Hixie about it and he added
bitcoin to the whitelist:

http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=7849&to=7850

I'm currently finding out what the process is for browser makers to notice
the change (perhaps they watch the spec commit history and nothing needs to
be done), but within a few months most users should have browsers that can
accept bitcoin as a web-app handleable protocol scheme. I suppose IE10
users may be the laggards, but I guess we can live with that for now.

Ian pointed out some errors in the BIP21 spec. What's the process for
amending the BIP? Do we need to create a new one and mark the old one as
replaced, or can we just fix it in place given the relatively exotic nature
of most of the issues? Here's his feedback:


- BNF doesn't say what it's character set is (presumably it's Unicode)

 - "bitcoinparams" production doesn't define the separator, so in theory
the syntax is ...?label=foomessage=fooother=foo (rather than
...?label=foo&message=foo etc)

- the syntax allows ?amount=FOO&amount=1.1 as far as I can tell, since
"otherparam" matches any name followed by any value, including "amount"
followed by a bogus value.

- "pchar" is referenced without definition.

- the "simpler" syntax is just wrong (it would result in
bitcoin:address?amount=1?label=FOO rather
than bitcoin:address?amount=1&label=FOO)

BTW the IETF URL specs are being obsoleted by http://url.spec.whatwg.org/,
at least for Web purposes. In that case matters.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3109 bytes --]

Re: [Bitcoin-development] BIP21 bitcoin URIs and HTML5

[Andreas Schildbach]

I had another amendment, which roughly (can't remember the details) has
to do with case-sensitivity of the scheme part and parameter names. If I
remember right, BITCOIN:1d4...?AMOUNT=0.1 would be a correct URI but not
valid in the sense of BIP21 currently.


On 04/24/2013 09:42 AM, Mike Hearn wrote:
> HTML5 allows web apps to register themselves for handling URI schemes,
> such as the bitcoin: URI that is already in use and being extended as
> part of the payment protocol.
> 
> The bad news is that for security reasons there is a whitelist of
> acceptable schemes in the spec:
> 
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/timers.html#dom-navigator-registerprotocolhandler
> 
> The good news is that yesterday I talked to Hixie about it and he added
> bitcoin to the whitelist:
> 
> http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=7849&to=7850
> 
> I'm currently finding out what the process is for browser makers to
> notice the change (perhaps they watch the spec commit history and
> nothing needs to be done), but within a few months most users should
> have browsers that can accept bitcoin as a web-app handleable protocol
> scheme. I suppose IE10 users may be the laggards, but I guess we can
> live with that for now.
> 
> Ian pointed out some errors in the BIP21 spec. What's the process for
> amending the BIP? Do we need to create a new one and mark the old one as
> replaced, or can we just fix it in place given the relatively exotic
> nature of most of the issues? Here's his feedback:
> 
> 
> - BNF doesn't say what it's character set is (presumably it's Unicode)
> 
>  - "bitcoinparams" production doesn't define the separator, so in theory
> the syntax is ...?label=foomessage=fooother=foo (rather than
> ...?label=foo&message=foo etc)
> 
> - the syntax allows ?amount=FOO&amount=1.1 as far as I can tell, since
> "otherparam" matches any name followed by any value, including "amount"
> followed by a bogus value.
> 
> - "pchar" is referenced without definition.
> 
> - the "simpler" syntax is just wrong (it would result in
> bitcoin:address?amount=1?label=FOO rather
> than bitcoin:address?amount=1&label=FOO)
> 
> BTW the IETF URL specs are being obsoleted
> by http://url.spec.whatwg.org/, at least for Web purposes. In that case
> matters.
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Try New Relic Now & We'll Send You this Cool Shirt
> New Relic is the only SaaS-based application performance monitoring service 
> that delivers powerful full stack analytics. Optimize and monitor your
> browser, app, & servers with just a few lines of code. Try New Relic
> and get this awesome Nerd Life shirt! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic_d2d_apr
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
> 

Re: [Bitcoin-development] BIP21 bitcoin URIs and HTML5

[Gavin Andresen]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 447 bytes --]

> Ian pointed out some errors in the BIP21 spec. What's the process for
amending the BIP? Do we need to create a new one and mark the old one as
replaced, or can we just fix it in place given the relatively exotic nature
of most of the issues?

Those all sound like bugs in the BIP; I think they should just be fixed, I
don't think we need a new BIP.

I vote for a new meta-data item in the BIP header:

  Corrected: <date>

-- 
--
Gavin Andresen

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 570 bytes --]

Re: [Bitcoin-development] BIP21 bitcoin URIs and HTML5

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 7:51 AM, Gavin Andresen <gavinandresen@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Ian pointed out some errors in the BIP21 spec. What's the process for
>> amending the BIP? Do we need to create a new one and mark the old one as
>> replaced, or can we just fix it in place given the relatively exotic nature
>> of most of the issues?
> Those all sound like bugs in the BIP; I think they should just be fixed, I
> don't think we need a new BIP.

Yup.  Corrections are fine, esp ones which are not gratuitously incompatible.

Re: [Bitcoin-development] BIP21 bitcoin URIs and HTML5

[Mike Hearn]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1118 bytes --]

Chrome has whitelisted bitcoin: URIs for web apps, and Firefox it turns out
doesn't use whitelisting at all, so it already works there.

https://chromiumcodereview.appspot.com/14531004

I'm hoping this means web wallet developers won't be put off from
supporting the payment protocol (that risk is the reason I started this
work).

The next step is to file bugs against WebKit (for Safari/iOS/misc other
platforms), and IE, though I don't know if Microsoft uses open bug trackers
much.



On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 6:37 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 7:51 AM, Gavin Andresen <gavinandresen@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> Ian pointed out some errors in the BIP21 spec. What's the process for
> >> amending the BIP? Do we need to create a new one and mark the old one as
> >> replaced, or can we just fix it in place given the relatively exotic
> nature
> >> of most of the issues?
> > Those all sound like bugs in the BIP; I think they should just be fixed,
> I
> > don't think we need a new BIP.
>
> Yup.  Corrections are fine, esp ones which are not gratuitously
> incompatible.
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1738 bytes --]

Re: [Bitcoin-development] BIP21 bitcoin URIs and HTML5

[Melvin Carvalho]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3017 bytes --]

On 24 April 2013 09:42, Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net> wrote:

> HTML5 allows web apps to register themselves for handling URI schemes,
> such as the bitcoin: URI that is already in use and being extended as part
> of the payment protocol.
>
> The bad news is that for security reasons there is a whitelist of
> acceptable schemes in the spec:
>
>
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/timers.html#dom-navigator-registerprotocolhandler
>
> The good news is that yesterday I talked to Hixie about it and he added
> bitcoin to the whitelist:
>
> http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=7849&to=7850
>
> I'm currently finding out what the process is for browser makers to notice
> the change (perhaps they watch the spec commit history and nothing needs to
> be done), but within a few months most users should have browsers that can
> accept bitcoin as a web-app handleable protocol scheme. I suppose IE10
> users may be the laggards, but I guess we can live with that for now.
>

This is great news for bitcon, and the IANA application will be improved if
there is evidence of it being used


>
> Ian pointed out some errors in the BIP21 spec. What's the process for
> amending the BIP? Do we need to create a new one and mark the old one as
> replaced, or can we just fix it in place given the relatively exotic nature
> of most of the issues? Here's his feedback:
>
>
> - BNF doesn't say what it's character set is (presumably it's Unicode)
>
>  - "bitcoinparams" production doesn't define the separator, so in theory
> the syntax is ...?label=foomessage=fooother=foo (rather than
> ...?label=foo&message=foo etc)
>
> - the syntax allows ?amount=FOO&amount=1.1 as far as I can tell, since
> "otherparam" matches any name followed by any value, including "amount"
> followed by a bogus value.
>
> - "pchar" is referenced without definition.
>
> - the "simpler" syntax is just wrong (it would result in
> bitcoin:address?amount=1?label=FOO rather
> than bitcoin:address?amount=1&label=FOO)
>
> BTW the IETF URL specs are being obsoleted by http://url.spec.whatwg.org/,
> at least for Web purposes. In that case matters.
>

Not 100% sure how accurate this is, tho it may be the world view of some
folks in WHATWG.  WHATWG is not a major standards body tho.  Work on
improving the URL spec is always welcome, as it is the value proposition of
the Web.


>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Try New Relic Now & We'll Send You this Cool Shirt
> New Relic is the only SaaS-based application performance monitoring service
> that delivers powerful full stack analytics. Optimize and monitor your
> browser, app, & servers with just a few lines of code. Try New Relic
> and get this awesome Nerd Life shirt! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic_d2d_apr
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 5101 bytes --]