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

I guess WebID can be any... Something used in WebID-TLS may need to be
http(s).

On Mon, 27 Jun 2022, 19:11 Eric Jahn, <eric@alexandriaconsulting.com> wrote:

> 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
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>
> 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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>>
>>
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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 
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>>

Received on Monday, 27 June 2022 18:14:17 UTC