what would be the best way to let users define http ids for bookmarks and topics?

Now that the bookmarks basically work (I do need to work more on ui and 
see why xpcom components are not always installed and list of other 
things), some early thoughts about letting users define they want to use 
http ids instead or uuids.

The original plan was to also allow users to define a http:// prefix for 
their bookmark and topic ids when do wishes if they have a domain or let 
the bookmark server to do that automatically.

I could simply just ask for an http:// path and generate id's underneath 
it. For instance:

user given path:
http://example.org/ubimarks/myids/

bookmark id:
http://example.org/ubimarks/myids/8643f740-8d77-11d9-9b9c-f6eaee43b958 
(with #? or /? or nothing?)

or if the uuid component is not available something like:
http://example.org/myids/time/2005-02-10-24-00-11-10

This would not create an http file with the bookmark or topic just the 
id so it does not really matter here if the id is http or not. I did 
hear discussion stating that the intention should be that the http id 
files always exists.

If I just ask for a prefix, nothing prevents the users to use someone 
else's domain for the ids, which is not perfect.

On the other hand http kind of requires a document to exists and 
existing http URI does let the user put some info to that. But what info?

Practically it is better to not include info about the bookmarks or 
topics in the id file. It is better to use the bookmark file where all 
other info already is so that we don't have to check all id files in 
addition to bookmark files.

Maybe instead of a file for each URI the user could define a current 
prefix rdf file and just list all the ids in it? In that case, we need 
to be careful to not use relative URIs etc. that were discussed earlier 
in this draft document http://www.w3.org/2003/12/20-local-global.html. 
Also if it becomes a requirement to add ids to the file when they are 
created it would again prevent the user creating topics or bookmarks 
when not online.

Ideas to solve this?

Marja (wondering how a simple improvement became so complicated :-))

Received on Tuesday, 8 March 2005 20:50:35 UTC