Re: on the dix: URI scheme for DIX/SXIP

On 18-Mar-06, at 6:43 PM, Larry Masinter wrote:
>
> I'm just having a hard time figuring out what 'dix:' URIs
> are supposed to mean and how they're intended to be used.

 From dmd1: (http://dixs.org/index.php/Draft-merrells-dix-01.txt)

    The DIX protocol uses DIX URI Names for:

    o  Capability Names

    o  Property References

    o  Message Parameters

    o  Constant Values


>
> What does 'dix:/core#1' mean? What is the namespace for
> 'core', and where is it registered? Can I make up one
> of my own? What if two people decide to do so but
> assign different meanings? Or is there just a limited
> set of these things, all listed in the 'dix' document?

 From dmd1:

Extensibility stems from the authority. Anyone with a registered
    domain name can create DIX URI Names using their own domain name as
    the authority in the URI.

...

To elaborate, anything starting with dix:/ would be reserved for  
identifiers in the DIX standard. eg. dix:/core#1
Anyone with a domain name can define their own. eg. dix://acm.org/foobar


> It really looks like you're defining an authentication
> protocol and trying to pack all of the parameters of
> authentication requests into a URI.

DIX is NOT a authentication protocol. The parameters are NOT in a URI.

> But it's not really
> clear you need a URI scheme at all. What if you just
> got rid of the four characters 'dix:' and used the rest
> of the string everywhere that expected a dix? Wouldn't
> it work just as well? In which circumstances might I
> find a URI which would possibly be a 'dix:' and possibly
> be something else?

Having the scheme allows the string values to be globally unique so  
that DIX values can be recognized.

I think we are getting ahead of ourselves here as we still don't have  
a WG for DIX.

-- Dick

Received on Sunday, 19 March 2006 03:43:37 UTC