- From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 21:25:42 -0600
- To: Larry Masinter <masinter@Adobe.COM>
- CC: Aaron Swartz <aswartz@swartzfam.com>, uri@w3.org, Donald.Eastlake@motorola.com, Donald Eastlake 3rd <dee3@torque.pothole.com>, Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org>, Michael Mealling <michaelm@netsol.com>, Ted Hardie <hardie@equinix.com>
Larry Masinter wrote: > > > What's wrong with the current system of URI mapping: > > > > http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/ > > > IANA makes no guarantees that its web site will not change substantially > in organization. > > Our examination of the current IANA web site is that the organizations > of URIs is informal and not intended for automatic processing. > > There is no guarantee that "www.isi.edu" will continue to be the authority > for IANA. OK, so... let's fix that; let's set up http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/text/plain and so on, similar to the existing materials, and let's get IANA to guarantee not to change it without due process. If you want more machine processability, use stylized/constrained XHTML for the materials (or any other form of XML that you like; the widely deployed support for XHTML is pretty handy, though). The ability to trade a URI for information about a media assignment using ubiquitously deployed software (DNS and HTTP) is sufficiently valuable that IANA/isi set up a system to do it even before there was any institutional mandate to do so. And there's no conflict between that sort of system and institutionalized names. So let's not sacrifice the utitility of the DNS/HTTP set up and get nothing in return. Let's not pretend that a different URI scheme will somehow magically provide more stability than http/dns; stability depends on social practices, not just technology. -- Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
Received on Thursday, 18 January 2001 22:26:21 UTC