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

Why does it have to be an HTTP IRI?  Why not, just an IRI (any protocol)?

Eric Jahn
CTO/Data Architect
Alexandria Consulting LLC
St. Petersburg, Florida
727.537.9474
alexandriaconsulting.com
WebID <https://alexandriaconsulting.com/files/eric_jahn.rdf#me>


On Mon, Jun 27, 2022 at 1:22 PM Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com>
wrote:

> 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 :(
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Kingsley Idehen 
> Founder & CEO
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