Re: Registration of acct: as a URI scheme has been requested

On 20 June 2012 21:04, Henry S. Thompson <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote:

> Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com> writes:
>
> > If the architecture of the world wide web can't accommodate new URI
> > schemes then its broken. The great news is that it isn't broken.
>
> The Web can indeed accommodate new URI schemes.  As I read it, this
> isn't a proposal for a new URI scheme.  It's a proposal to add a
> string of letters to a quasi-email-address so that the result _looks_
> like a URI.  But as far as I can tell although it _looks_ like a URI,
> it doesn't _walk_ like one (If I include it in my HTML nothing will
> happen when a user clicks on it) or even _quack_ like one (No
> general-purpose semantics is provided for it in the RFC draft that I
> can see), so I'm inclined to conclude that it's _not_ a duckXXXXURI.
>
> Seriously, my point is that not every identifier that's used in a
> protocol that is used on the Web has to be a URI.  The ones that are
> expected to be generic, to have a meaning and utility _outside_ the
> protocol, sure.  But in that case I expect to see a
> protocol-independent use for them spelled out.
>
> On the other hand non-extensible enumerated types with
> protocol-internal semantics are probably not anybody's idea of a good
> basis for defining a new URI scheme.
>
> Where does acct: fall on the implied continuum?  How generic/useful
> does an identifier scheme have to be before it deserves a URI scheme?
> Reasonable people may differ.  But, to quote RFC4395,
>
>  "The use and deployment of new URI schemes in the Internet
>   infrastructure is costly . . . For these reasons, the unbounded
>   registration of new schemes is harmful.  New URI schemes SHOULD
>   have clear utility to the broad Internet community." [1]
>

Just out of curiosity, do less stringent arguments hold or URN's.  For
example:

urn:acct:


>
> So I'm asking for some evidence of clear utility, beyond protocol
> convenience, for going the URI scheme route.
>
> ht
>
> [1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4395#section-2.1
> --
>       Henry S. Thompson, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
>      10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, SCOTLAND -- (44) 131 650-4440
>                Fax: (44) 131 650-4587, e-mail: ht@inf.ed.ac.uk
>                       URL: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/
>  [mail from me _always_ has a .sig like this -- mail without it is forged
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>
>