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

On 6/27/22 2:09 PM, Eric Jahn 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
> 727.537.9474
> alexandriaconsulting.com <http://alexandriaconsulting.com>
> WebID <https://alexandriaconsulting.com/files/eric_jahn.rdf#me>

Hi Eric,

Long story short, WebID is HTTP-specific.

There's a superset of WebID called NetID that isn't HTTP-specific i.e., 
it entertains the notion of resolvable IRIs that aren't HTTP-specific.

Kingsley

>
>
> 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
>>
>>     Connect | WebID <http://pmcb55.inrupt.net/profile/card#me>,
>>     GitHub <https://github.com/pmcb55>
>>
>>     Explore  | www.inrupt.com <http://www.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
>     OpenLink Software
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>
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-- 
Regards,

Kingsley Idehen 
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
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Received on Monday, 27 June 2022 18:34:23 UTC