Internet Info 1997 December/Internet_Info_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_December_1997.iso/ietf/urn/urn-archives/urn-ietf.archive.9701/000000_owner-urn-ietf _Tue Jan 7 14:03:39 1997.msg

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Date: Tue, 07 Jan 1997 13:02:04 -0600
From: Ryan Moats <[e-mail]>
Organization: InterNIC Directory and Database Services
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Subject: [URN] Proposed URN Syntax Draft changes to align with URL syntax draft
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Ryan Moats wrote:
>
> Folks-
>
> There have been some good comments about the syntax draft and some
> good stuff coming out of meshing it with the URL syntax, so I am
> planning the following (i.e. you have been warned!).
>
> There will be another pre-release of syntax-02 coming out on
> 12/26 ( Holidays, what are Holidays ;-} ).  The target is to
> have -02 be sent to the i-d editors on 1/6/97.
>
> This way folks (who don't have anything else to do between 12/25
> and 1/1) can read the new version...

Well, here we are in the week of 1/6/97 and some issues have come up
vis-a-vie the URL syntax document.  Here are the technical issues (as I
see them, and I've probably missed/ignored some):

1. The URN syntax is more restrictive in the types of characters
allowed vis-a-vie the URL syntax.  Specifically, the characters
";", "$", "_", "!", "~", "*", "'" are allowed (in unescaped format)
in the URL syntax while not in the URN syntax.

2. The URL syntax document makes a claim that the its syntax is the
syntax for URIs in general so that URNs may be used in any data field
that might otherwise hold a URL.

I'll admit that there are a lot of political issues that I am ignoring
for now, but I want to see if we can move forward with the technical
issues.

My current thoughts are to move the characters in note 1 above from the
excluded character set to the allowed character set to more closely
align the URN and URL character sets.  IF SOMEONE THINKS THIS IS A BAD
IDEA THIS IS A GOOD TIME TO LET ME KNOW!

Issue 2 is handled (I believe) by adding an appendix to the URN syntax
document that covers how a URL resolver should react to a URN. My
proposal is that the URN be considered an opaque URL that gets handed
off to a URN resolver. There are alternate solutions, but they become
progressively more ugly.

Note that issues 1 and 2 are somewhat independent.  Given the current
allowed characters and the above suggested appendix, any URN could be
used in place of a URL.

Although I've considered it in the past, I think that defining URN's as
a URL "scheme" is a less optimal solution than the above proposals.

Obviously, I am soliciting input to try and gain an idea about consensus
(and fairly quickly, too).

Ryan