Re: Was mandating WebIDs be IRIs ever discussed (as opposed to them 'just' being URIs)?

On 6/27/22 10:52 AM, Pat McBennett wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just wanted to first ask if anyone here knew of any existing 
> discussions at all (either here in this mailing list (as I can't find 
> anything directly relevant when I search this list for 'IRI'), or 
> anywhere else public) on updating the current statement in the draft 
> spec [1] (i.e., ""A WebID is an HTTP URI") to use the term IRI instead 
> of URI?
>
> (Note: I'm very deliberately not even mentioning the term HTTP in that 
> definition - as that is a completely separate discussion point (i.e., 
> getting into DIDs and IPFS, etc.))
>
> I don't pretend to know the history behind efforts to definitively 
> define what an IRI is - but I understand that IETF 3987 [2] never 
> actually became an official standard (or did it?).
>
> I understand that the whole area of clearly defining what we mean by 
> URL, URI, or IRI is probably still a mess. This was brilliantly 
> articulated back in 2016 in this blog entry [3] by the maintainer of 
> cURL (Daniel Stenberg): "Not even curl follows any published spec very 
> closely these days...There’s no unified URL standard and there’s no 
> work in progress towards that. I don’t count WHATWG’s spec as a real 
> effort either".
>
> The reason I ask this question at all is because the RDF 1.1 Concepts 
> and Abstract Syntax makes it explicitly clear that all identifiers in 
> RDF are IRIs (as defined by IETF 3987, so whether that is an official 
> standard or not), and it's clear from section "3.2 IRIs" that the 
> reason for RDF explicitly stating the use of IETF 3987 IRIs over URIs is:
>   "IRIs are a generalization of URIs [RFC3986] that permits a wider 
> range of Unicode characters."
>
> Therefore I interpret that as saying that RDF mandates IRIs so as to 
> be as inclusive as possible of character sets to allow people from all 
> around the world to use their native languages to mint identifiers. 
> (Seems like quite a laudable intent to me!)
>
> So my question, simply re-stated, is: has anyone discussed the idea of 
> mandating WebIDs be IRIs too, for the same reason - i.e., to 
> explicitly be as inclusive as possible of global character sets?
>
> (Seems to me like WebID has *even more* reason to be explicitly 
> inclusive of character sets for identifiers than RDF even, since 
> WebIDs are expressly intended to identify people (as well as 
> organizations, and IoT devices, and 'agents', etc.))
>
> Cheers,
>
> Pat.
>
> 1 - 
> https://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/webid/spec/identity/#:~:text=a%20given%20Server.-,WebID,A%20WebID%20is%20a%20URI%20with%20an%20HTTP%20or%20HTTPS%20scheme,-which%20denotes%20an
> 2 - https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3987.txt
> 3 - https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/05/11/my-url-isnt-your-url/
>
> *Pat McBennett*, Technical Architect
>
> Contact  | patm@inrupt.com
>
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Hi Pat,

Long story short, your point is valid.

Challenge:

Evolving the WebID spec is fundamentally difficult, IMHO.

A WebID should be an HTTP IRI that denotes an Agent.

How that becomes part of the spec is a completely different matter :(

-- 
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Kingsley Idehen 
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