4. Terminology

The following is a description of the words used frequently in these specifications.

Term

Meaning/explanation

URL scheme

A text string that describes the location and attributes of contents on a network.
It is used to start or enable access to a specified application.
Also, by appended paths or queries, further detailed instructions or the transfer of data can be performed.

Example) sample://path/?q=xxx
URL scheme … sample://
Path … path/
Query … q=xxx

Path

This is the text string used for defining the contents at the end of the URL scheme.

Query

This is the text string following “?” used for defining contents. “=” marks are inserted between a variable name and its variable value. Multiple definitions can be made by linking them with “&” marks.

URL encoding

This is the conversion of text such as http://www.star-m.jp/ into http://%3A%2F%2Fwww.star-m.jp%2F .
This is also referred to as percent-encoding.
The reverse of this conversion is called “URL decoding”.
The reason URL encoding is required is that the letters used in URLs are fixed, so a conversion method specified in RFC is used.
In PassPRNT, encoding compliant with RFC3986 is required.

Base64

This is an encoding format that is used to handle multi-byte characters and binary data in environments that cannot handle other characters using 64 types (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, +, /) of printable alphanumeric characters.
In addition to the 64 types, “=” is used to fill (padding) the extra spaces. Through this conversion, the amount of data is 4/3 (133%). For the MIME standard, because a newline code is included in each 76 characters, 2 bytes are added for this lot, and the amount of data becomes approximately 137%.