RE: URIs & Namespaces

> so what would you prefer as a uri for 
> your descriptions:
> 
> http://example.org/unitedstates/california/berkeley/southhall
> location:southhall;http://berkeley.edu/campus
> mikesscheme:southhall

I'm a strong believe in URIs that can be dereferencable using the currently
in-place infrastracture. That means what people call HTTP URLs.

> of course it would be good if there were not too many 
> namespaces, or at least some reasonable number of them, but i 
> don't want to create a place name concept that somehow 
> imposes limitations in that dimension.

See that is where I believe namespaces become a problem, when allowed to
proliferate without constraint. 

One of the reasons that Mime-Types work so well is that there is an IANA
registry for them.

> so, the two "single vocabularies" i have foreseen so far 
> (because they are the only ones for which i can see some real 
> global consensus) are
> 
> - wgs84 coordinates
> - country names
> 
> both of these vocabularies also have their problems, but i 
> think they are at least something to start with. 

The fact that there is a global consensus on it is an incredibly valuable
property.

> i can fully 
> understand your goal and wanted to look into "locations in 
> wikipedia" myself (thus the xml database plans for spring). 
> but i would not go as far as to call a wikipedia-derived 
> place name vocabulary an excellent candidate for a "single 
> vocabulary", but this is just a matter of taste and scale.

Let me clarify; I was using Wikipedia as an example, not as a candidate.
Wikipedia has no rules that require their URLs to be static once
established. Wikipedia's editors reorganize from time to time. What I'm
envisioning would need more stability.

> (as a side note: it would be interesting to check and see how 
> many of the getty or alexandria place names are not in 
> wikipedia. my guess would be that this would be quite a few, 
> but i might be totally wrong.)

I'd be interested to see one example...

> in a way it's not, and i really like this level of 
> discussion. but i think in a way our ideas are compatible, we 
> are just thinking about slightly different levels of the 
> problem of how to name things.

Quite possibly.

> the original (blog) post contains these examples, it lists 
> the four different solutions that i could come up with (the 
> fifth one would be the conclusion that something like that 
> should not be done).
> 
> http://dret.typepad.com/dretblog/2007/12/uris-namespaces.html

I didn't see it before, sorry.  What of an example for "context?"

One thing: I think any standard that typically requires URL encoding such as
your examples in your #3 and #4 cases are not good ones.

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org
http://atlanta-web.org

Received on Monday, 10 December 2007 09:18:07 UTC