URN Proposals: What they have in common

Having been absolutely do busy to keep up lately I read all of the
current drafts I could find and read them on the plane over here.

I was pleasantly suprised at how similar they are. Here is a brief
synopsis of basically what every has already said:

There are two parts to a URN: the Authority and the Opaque_string.
Most of the proposals use DNS in some way to point to the Authority.
The main difference between the DNS proposals is namespace.
All (except for handle) use either http or whois++.

The gist of this mail is that with the exception of the handle proposal
nearly all the other proposals are very very similar except in
very small almost nitpicky ways (hell, even I'm being vaguely religious
when it comes to the difference between ":" and "/". My only supportable
religious conviction is that the namespace must be new and be capable
of being semanticly free. (i.e. names aren't vanity plates).

I believe that if we all were to "give up" a little we could fold about
4 of the proposals together (that is all except the handle proposal).

-MM
-- 
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Life is a game. Someone wins and someone loses. Get used to it.
<BR>
<HR><A HREF="http://www.gatech.edu/michael.html">Michael Mealling</A>

Received on Monday, 17 July 1995 09:45:02 UTC