Re: Some recent Internet Drafts relating to URIs

On 2002-01-20 19:00, "ext Michael Mealling" <michael@neonym.net> wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 20, 2002 at 06:29:31PM +0200, Patrick Stickler wrote:
>> On 2002-01-19 14:04, "ext Justin Couch" <justin@vlc.com.au> wrote:
>>> ... The
>>> URN class is coded to look for the "urn:" prefix,
>> 
>> But not all URNs are 'urn:'s.
>> 
>> 'hrn:'s are also URNs.
> 
> We tried that route and after almost 10 years never got any agreement on it.
> Both sides had perfectly valid points so we wasted _years_ of time on
> arguments that in the end wouldn't have changed much anyway...

Interesting....   so you propose a monopoly on indirect identifier schemes?

What about folks who need or want a hierarchical URN scheme? What about
folks who do not wish to reserve a 'urn:' namespace because the space
they want to use will be transient -- but none the less in need of global
uniqueness. What about ... surely I don't need to enumerate all of the
obvious cases where 'uri:' doesn't do the job...

Sorry that I wasn't present for those ten long years of discussion.

I don't agree, though, with your asserted conclusions.
 
>>> ... If you created a URL object
>>> using "hrn:"
>> 
>> But you wouldn't do that, since an 'hrn:' is not a URL, it
>> is a URN.
> 
> And I disagree. A 'URN' is just one URI scheme and trying to get everyone
> to agree that there's more to it than that just wont' fly. I tried arguing
> that for a long time and in the end I realized it just wasn't worth the
> effort.

Let's please keep the terminology straight. 'URN' is a URI Class, not a
scheme. If you wish to assert that there is one and only one URN scheme,
namely 'urn:', fine, but they are *not* the same thing.

Whether you subscribe to the classical or contemporary view of whether
URI classes should be formal or not, the classes still have definition,
and when we speak of URI, URL, URN, etc. we speak of classes, not schemes.

And when I assert that 'hrn:' is a URN scheme, that assertion is valid,
even per the contemporary view. Whether or not some application should
*know* that it is a URN and ascribe some common shared semantics of URN'ness
to it, or whether it should take it in isolation of any classification,
is a separate issue.

I.e. the only difference between the classical and contemporary views
is whether URI classifications are formal or not, not whether those
URI classes have definition (possibly only informal).
 
> The best thing you can and will get is to simply say that there are URIs
> and that each scheme has its own semantics and anything beyond that is
> application specific. IMNSHO, I think you'll have a better chance putting
> these semantics into RDF than you ever will getting them as standard parts
> of the URI definitions....

I intend to express them in RDF, and applications which choose the classical
view of URI classification (that such classifications are formal) may use
such RDF schemas as the mechanism for formal application of such
common semantics. 

E.g. see attachment...

Cheers,

Patrick

--
               
Patrick Stickler              Phone: +358 50 483 9453
Senior Research Scientist     Fax:   +358 7180 35409
Nokia Research Center         Email: patrick.stickler@nokia.com