Re: FPIs to URNs

Thus spoke lee@sq.com (at least at 11:00 PM 12/4/96 EST)
>I want to see FPI resolution that works when you *don't* already have
>the file and have never seen the FPI before on your local system.

I thought that was what I was describing. That is certainly what I am
trying for.

>For my part, I would be happy to ditch FPIs and use some other URN scheme
>if it scaled better:
[...]
>Note that this meets Debbie's requirement without actually being an
>SGML Formal Public Identifier.  I.e., there are other possible solutions.

I'll be happy to answer any questions I can on alternative URN schemes.

[hierarchical example deleted]
>This bigcat would hence be the better (worse) part of 50 MBytes, which
>won't fit in my Netscape tmp directory, and hence can't be downloaded
>by Netscape for use with a helper app.
>
>This is my biggest concern with the (literally) millions of unregistered
>public identifiers belonging to tens of thousands or hundreds of
>thousands or more of issuing "authorities".

It is not necessary to download the whole catalog. If the client is
"URN-savvy" it can issue a request containing the FPI it is trying to
resolve and the server is supposed to send back a "tailored" catalog
that only contains matching entries.

The %!uri substitution thing was to offer the same benefits to non-URN
systems. 

>So, is there a URN scheme that scales in a way that makes it easier
>to implement than grandfathering SGML FPIs?

Sorry to be difficult here, but let me turn the question around. Do you
know of any naming approach that demonstrates the scalability you want?
If so, point me at it and we can see about how to make it a URN namespace.

Regards,
Ron Daniel Jr.                       email: rdaniel@lanl.gov
Advanced Computing Lab               voice: +1 505 665 0597
MS B287                                fax: +1 505 665 4939
Los Alamos National Laboratory        http://www.acl.lanl.gov/~rdaniel/
Los Alamos, NM, USA  87545    obscure_term: "hyponym"

Received on Thursday, 5 December 1996 11:54:42 UTC