# What is the point of limiting URI schemes in autolinks?

**URL:** <https://talk.commonmark.org/t/what-is-the-point-of-limiting-uri-schemes-in-autolinks/555>\
**Category:** Spec\
**Created:** [September 10, 2014, 11:36pm UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/what-is-the-point-of-limiting-uri-schemes-in-autolinks/555 "2014-09-10T23:36:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 6

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**Author:** ![Burt\_Harris](https://cdn.commonmark.org/user_avatar/talk.commonmark.org/burt_harris/32/368_2.png) [@Burt\_Harris](https://talk.commonmark.org/u/Burt_Harris)\
**Post date:** [September 11, 2014, 5:58pm UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/what-is-the-point-of-limiting-uri-schemes-in-autolinks/555/6 "2014-09-11T17:58:06Z")

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I think namespaces are _still_ a thing when it comes to extensibility (see topic [Namespacing with CURIEs](http://talk.commonmark.org/t/namspacing-with-compact-uris-curies/553) for my thoughts on extensions).

But core CommonMark doesn’t have namespaces yet, so limiting _this topic_ to the spec it seems to me that `<tag:foo>` and `<foo:tag>` should be treated consistently, but as the spec is currently written, they come out quite differently as `<a href="tag:foo">tag:foo</a>` and `&lt;foo:tag&gt;` respectively.

I would hope this inconsistency should be resolved as soon as possible, before extensions are standardized. I think that limiting auto-link to absolute URIs (with the colon), rather than embedding a list of supported schemes would be the preferable choice to achieve such consistency. I’ll put together a pull-request with formal changes, referencing this topic for further discussion.

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_[View the full topic](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/what-is-the-point-of-limiting-uri-schemes-in-autolinks/555)._