Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] Review Request - Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 (#556)

Initially, I skeptical about the decision to use a colon (`:`) to separate the method name from the method-specific id. Since the colon has [several different special meanings in URLs already](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986), adding yet another separate meaning makes parsing harder, and increases the likelihood that old or carelessly written code will misparse these. However, after digging in a bit more, I was reminded that this syntax is consistent with [URNs](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8141.html), so using colons is perfect for consistency.

Do note however that NIDs and NSSes in URNs (somewhat analogous to method names and method-specific ids here) are [parsed as paths](https://url.spec.whatwg.org/#example-url-components). Given that DIDs [have a separate path component](https://w3c.github.io/did-core/#path), how are they supposed to be parsed? Is `<method-name>:<method-specific-id>` part of the host (which is inconsistent with URNs), or part of the path (which means the actual path needs to be extracted manually)?

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Received on Friday, 15 January 2021 13:53:41 UTC