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Re: Proposal for an "address:" URI Scheme

From: Sean B. Palmer <sean@mysterylights.com>
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 21:36:03 -0000
Message-ID: <00ff01c0af2a$49fd5400$dd3f073e@z5n9x1>
To: "Dan Connolly" <connolly@w3.org>
Cc: "chad" <yandros@mit.edu>, "Aaron Swartz" <aswartz@swartzfam.com>, <uri@w3.org>, <www-talk@w3.org>
"Dan Connolly" <connolly@w3.org> wrote:-

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

Thanks; good catch.

> They're called postal addresses. [...]
> So of the three above, I'd use postal-address: .

You make a good case for this. In reflection, at least
"postal-address" is non-ambiguous, and carries a meaning that wouldn't
be confused with other URI schemes. Hmm... what was my initial
objection to it?

     From: Sean B. Palmer <sean@mysterylights.com>
     Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 4:09 PM
     [...]
     "postal-address:" is a bit long
     - http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/uri/2001Mar/0022.html

That does make it one of the larger schemes... but the main problem is
that the "-" rules out IETF-ization, as per RFC 2717:-

     The NAMES of schemes registered in the IETF tree MUST
     NOT contain the dash (also known as the hyphen and minus
     sign) character ('-') USASCII value 2Dh.
     - http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2717.txt

Which would currently be my main objection, although this need not be
an IETF standardized scheme.

> But I recommend developing a model for describing them
> and then come back to identifiers.

Agreed. "Standardization/deployment" (and hence *agreement*) are the
most important qualities for establishing any new URI scheme, and in
fact many new technologies.

> 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.

Clearly some liaison with the UPU is required at this point. There
doesn't seem to be a publicly addressable forum for such matters...
perhaps I shall I have to contact them direct. Ah, this might come
under their EDI project:-

     Projects and Activities - Technology
     - http://www.upu.int/upu/an/technology.html

--
Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
@prefix : <http://webns.net/roughterms/> .
:Sean :hasHomepage <http://infomesh.net/sbp/> .
Received on Saturday, 17 March 2001 16:33:40 UTC

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