Re: Proposal for an "address:" URI Scheme

"Sean B. Palmer" wrote:

> But "geo" is so closely related with very specialized place names...
> This scheme needs to indicate that it is used merely as a URI form for
> standard (whatever that means) postal addresses.

Er... it took me about 10 seconds to find the relevant authority:

  http://www.google.com/search?q=international+postal

->

  Universal Postal Union
  http://www.upu.int/

	About the UPU

                 Postal services form part of the daily life
                 of people all over the world. The
                 Universal Postal Union (UPU), with
                 headquarters in Berne, Switzerland, is
                 the specialized institution of the United
                 Nations that regulates this truly
                 universal service. The postal services of
                 its 189 member countries form the
                 largest physical distribution network in
                 the world. Some 6.2 million postal
                 employees working in over 700,000
                 post offices all over the world handle an
                 annual total of 430 billion letters,
                 printed matter and parcels in the
                 domestic service and almost 10 billion
                 letters, printed matter and parcels in
                 the international service.

	http://www.upu.int/upu/an/about.html

(sigh... frames. I hope they learn about the Web Content
Accessability Guidelines soon.)

> As I've stated before
> "postal address" neatly becomes either:-
> 
>    postal-address:
>    post:
>    or address:
> 
> "postal-address:" is a bit long, "post:" is too verb-like, and
> "address:" seems to fit the bill nicely. Could you give a reason why
> you don't like "address:" for the scheme name? You say to
> "*definately*" change it, but don't state why you don't like it :-)

because connolly@w3.org is an address too; it's the address
of my internet mailbox.

They're called postal addresses.

  Postal addresses
  http://www.upu.int/ap/postcode.Choice?p_language=AN&p_language=AN

So of the three above, I'd use postal-address: .

But I recommend developing a model for describing them
and then come back to identifiers. Anybody can do
such a model, but standardization/deployment
of a new URI scheme requires an international agreement,
preferably one that the upu is party to.

For example, make up an upu: schema so that the postal
address for me at W3C/MIT is:

	[ upu:to "Dan Connolly";
	usps:street1 "200 Tech Square";
	usps:city "Cambridge";
	usps:state "MA";
	usps:zip "02139" ]

where

	usps:state rdfs:subPropertyOf upu:administrativeSubDivision.
	usps:zip rdfs:domain usps:PostBox.
	usps:PostBox rdfs:subClassOf upu:PostBox; #or: upu:PostDrop?
		rdfs:subclassOf [ daml:onProperty upu:country;
			daml:toValue "United States of America" ].

then if you can find a combination of upu: fields that
form a key (i.e. values for all those fields determine
a unique postbox) then you can make a URI out of
those values.

-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Saturday, 17 March 2001 12:18:28 UTC