Motivation for XML Resource Identifiers

Motivation:

Several XML-related specifications use strings which are interpreted
as URIs, but which allow the use of characters which must be escaped
in a legal URI, such as delimiters and non-ascii characters.  Examples
include XML System Identifiers [ref], the href attribute in XLink
[ref], and XML Base attributes [ref].  These specifications all
describe, with slightly different wording, the same algorithm for
converting the string to a URI for use in retrieving resources.  The
purpose of this RFC is to provide a single definition which can be
referenced by these specifications, and to provide a name for strings
of this type: XML Resource Identifiers.

Relation to IRIs:

Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) [RFC 3987] extend
URIs by allowing unescaped non-ascii characters.  XML Resource
Identifiers go further by allowing various ascii characters that
are illegal in both URIs and IRIs.  By escaping these characters
XML Resource Identifiers can be converted to IRIs, which can
in turn be converted to URIs if required.

-- Richard

Received on Wednesday, 14 March 2007 16:29:33 UTC