Internet Info 1997 December/Internet_Info_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_December_1997.iso/ietf/urn/urn-archives/urn-ietf.archive.9703/000083_owner-urn-ietf _Fri Mar 28 15:49:34 1997.msg

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Date: Fri, 28 Mar 1997 14:48:55 -0600
From: Dan Connolly <[e-mail]>
Organization: World Wide Web Consortium
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To: "Ron Daniel, Jr." <[e-mail]>
Cc: Patrik Faltstrom <[e-mail]>, [e-mail], [e-mail],
        [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [URN] draft-ietf-urn-nid-req-01.txt
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Ron Daniel, Jr. wrote:
> At 03:13 AM 3/28/97 -0600, Dan Connolly wrote:
> >See also, RFC1630 (informational)
>
> Gee Dan, when I read 1630 it says things like:
>
> "For existing Internet access protocols, it is necessary in most
> cases to define the encoding of the access algorithm into something
> concise enough to be termed address. URIs which refer to objects
> according to existing protocols are known as "Uniform Resource
> Locators" (URL)s ..."
>
> and
>
> "There is currently a drive to define a space of more persistent names
> than any URLs. These "Uniform Resource Names" are the subject of an
> IETF working group discussions."  (The group he was referring to was
> URI-WG. They are now being discussed in the more tightly focused URN-WG).
>
> Tim drew a pretty clear distinction between address and names.
> Addresses had a mapping to Internet Protocols, names did not.

But he didn't distinguish between the space of addressing schemes
and the space of naming schemes. The value of keeping those
spaces together is incredibly high: the aspect of the web
from which it derives its tremenous value is it universal
information space.

> The URN-WG's charter is based on that distinction, so any followups
> should drop it from the CC list.

I'm happy to see the URN-WG concern itself only with URI
schemes that seem like names. But I'm not happy with URLs
and URNs being gratuitously incompatible.

If there is to be a registry of URI schemes, I just want
one of them. (and I think automating it in the .urn.net
domain is a cool idea!)

I want shared syntax rules too: if case-insensitivity is
critical for reliability (and I could easily agree that
it is), then let's make URLs case insensitive. I know zillions
of users will thank us. Or perhaps we can come up with
some convention where if the URI scheme starts with a capital
letter, then the case of the rest of the identifier doesn't
matter... or something like that. In any case, let's have
one syntax debate, not two.


I'm sorry if my comments are out of order with respect to
the existing URN-WG charter (I can't find the URL WG
charter); but the URL specs are in revision,
and I see a clear opportunity to finally write down the
rules for the space of uniform resource identifiers.
This is the sort of architectural integrity that the IETF
is all about, no?

--
Dan Connolly, W3C Architecture Domain Lead
<[e-mail]> [phone]
http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
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