Re: Boeing XRI Use Cases

Let me make a concrete proposal.
Could the W3C (the TAG? Or someone else?) issue a recommendation to the
effect that URIs of the following form are special:

http://xri.example.org/SOMETHING:/@boeing*jbradley/+home/+phone<http://xri.example.org/xri:/@boeing*jbradley/+home/+phone>

It would be permissable for an application detecting a URI of that form to
interpret the URI *either* according to the HTTP specification *or*
according to some other specification attached to the word SOMETHING.

SOMETHING's should probably be managed in a registry but I don't know
whether to use the domain name registry or something else. For the sake of
continuing, let's presume the domain name registry:

http://xri.example.org/uri.xri.org:/@boeing*jbradley/+home/+phone<http://xri.example.org/xri:/@boeing*jbradley/+home/+phone>

It might be a best practice that "http://xri.org/" have a prominent link to
documentation of how the URI is used.

Once the W3C had issued such a recommendation, the chances of someone
minting these URIs by accident would drop (even below the really tiny
current chance).

I see a use-case that's been bugging me for years;

http://my.vital.service.com/failover_uri:/path/failover_uris=URI2+URI3

(I'd have to think more about how exactly the escaping works to get the
three URIs embedded)

Today's HTTP clients would contact me with the full URI and I'd discard URI2
and URI3. But a smart HTTP client might try URI2 if it couldn't contact
my.vital.service.com.

 Paul Prescod