Re: B.9 Formal system, public identifiers?

>URL syntax is extensible: why can't it be used to do location-independent
>naming? Something like fpi://W3C/DTD/HTML_3.2 is a perfectly good URL.  I
>can't resolve it, but then I can't resolve FPIs either.

This was one of my original dislikes for FSI's: namely that they add a
lot of syntax for no apparent benefit. In the long run though, it's
all just syntax, and I think that one thing FSI's do bring to play is
that you can add attributes to the address. This can be very useful
for things like specifying encoding etc (yes, you could also use RFC
15XX mechanisms to encoding strings, but that is not a easy for users
to type).

>Location-independent naming is not a problem specific to XML.  We
>should use whatever general solution gets adopted for the WWW, rather
>than trying to come up with a solution specifically for XML.

True, but I haven't seen a good general purpose solution from the WWW
yet either. 

BTW. Do you see URI's as addresses or names? I tend to think of them
as pointers into a large shared address space.

Received on Tuesday, 15 October 1996 20:42:04 UTC