Thanks for your input. We thought about using straight text, but let me tell you how we came up with a particular pasteboard type.
The W3URIPboardType is analogous to a NXFilenamePboardType. Even though NXFilenamePboardType is simply a string of characters, the intent of the data is what is important. When NXFilenamePboardType is on the pasteboard, the application can respond in a different way than it would if it simple found text. You can also choose to put straight ASCII on the pasteboard as well, so non WEB literate apps can respond accordingly.
Now, I agree that the application could parse all text strings for "intelligent data", but the application would lose context as to what the users intent was for that data.
I hope that helps.
Greg Kostello
Begin forwarded message:
From: Darcy Brockbank <samurai@amber.hasc.ca>
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 95 16:19:48 -0500
To: WebStep@mail.xent.caltech.edu
Subject: Re: Kudos and Note on the URL pasteboard type
[...]
Some things, like the Text object in particular, export only ASCII
and RTF pasteboard types. I'd still remain useful, I think, if tools
like OmniWeb, etc., are able to parse ASCII input and determine,
for instance, if this is a URL, and use it as such.
[...]