New Internet Draft: draft-ietf-uri-urc-trivial-00

IETF URI Working Group                                         Paul E. Hoffman
Internet-Draft                                               Proper Publishing
draft-ietf-uri-urc-trivial-00                                  Ron Daniel, Jr.
Expires October 21, 1995                        Los Alamos National Laboratory


                            Trivial URC Syntax: urc0

Status of this memo

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Abstract

This document defines a trivial, machine-parsable Uniform Resource
Citiation (URC) syntax that can be returned from the resolution of Uniform
Resource Names (URNs). The syntax, called urc0, is also appropriate for any
program that can return URCs. More sophisticated URC schemes will be
developed later. urc0 is intended to be the simplest possible
machine-parsable representation of a URC.

This document does not cover any specific resolution schemes or the syntax
for URNs. It is expected that these issues (and other URN-related topics)
will be covered in different Internet Drafts submitted to the IETF URI
Working Group.

1. Introduction

As explained in [URC], the purpose or function of a URC is to provide a
vehicle or structure for the representation of URIs and their associated
metainformation. It is expected that the syntax of some URCs may be quite
complex in order to meet the needs of various Internet communities such as
librarians, archivists, and researchers. However, not all URCs must have a
complex structure.

At present, it is not known who will produce and read URCs. Although more
advanced URCs may be created by computer programs with the intention of
them only being read and parsed by other programs, it is clear that some
URCs will be written by people and that some will be read as plain text by
people. Even these URCs should be machine-parsable in order for some
Internet users to get the most value out of them.

The URC syntax here, called "urc0", is easy to type and read by people. It
is also trivial to parse by even the most simple programs.

2. Format URCs in the urc-0 Syntax

The format for urc-0 URCs is:

*[<header><CRLF><some-URL><CRLF>[<metainformation>]]

Each part starts with a header that has the following form:

=====[<charset>[/<language>]]

<charset> is the character set used in the metainformation. The value for
the field is one of "US-ASCII" or "ISO-8859-x", where "x" is a digit in the
range "1" through "9". If not specified, the default is "US-ASCII".

<language> is the language used in the metainformation. The value for the
field is a language identification tag described in [LANG]. If not
specified, the default is "x-unspecified".

The returned URL must conform to [URL]. If the URL is more than one line
long, it must begin with the characters "<URL:" and end with a ">"
character, as described in [URL].

The optional metainformation may be of any format and contain any text. The
only restriction is that no line of the metainformation may begin with the
characters "=====".

3. Examples of URCs Using the urc-0 Syntax

A URC that has a single URL and no metainformation might look like:

     =====
     ftp://elm.wnln.edu/pub/mirrors/phone-list.txt

A URC that has a URL on multiple lines might look like:

     =====
     <URL:ftp://elm.wnln.edu/pub/mirrors
     /phone-list.txt>

A URC that has a multiple URLs might look like:

     =====
     ftp://elm.wnln.edu/pub/mirrors/phone-list.txt
     =====
     ftp://gagu.bigstate.edu/admin/phones.html

A URC that has a multiple URLs with metainformation might look like:

     =====
     ftp://elm.wnln.edu/pub/mirrors/phone-list.txt
     This is the most up-to-date version of the WNLN-Bigstate phone list. It is
     maintained by Cheryl O'Donnell.
     =====US-ASCII/en
     ftp://gagu.bigstate.edu/admin/phones.html
     This is the mirror of the first URL at Bigstate.

4. Security Implications

Although there are security implications in transmitting URCs, there are no
security implications in defining one of their syntaxes.

5. References

[LANG] RFC 1766, "Tags for the Identification of Languages".

[URC] Internet-Draft, "URC Scenarios and Requirements". The name of the
draft at the time of this writing is "draft-ietf-uri-urc-req-01".

[URL] RFC 1738, "Uniform Resource Locators (URL)".

6. Author Contact Information

Paul E. Hoffman
Proper Publishing
127 Segre Place
Santa Cruz, CA, USA  95060
voice:  (408) 426-6222
phoffman@proper.com

Ron Daniel Jr.
MS B287
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, NM, USA 87545
voice:  (505) 665-0597
fax:  (505) 665-4939
rdaniel@lanl.gov

Received on Monday, 1 May 1995 12:19:01 UTC