New question: distinguished status of http:?

In reading TAG-team responses on namespace and content-type issues, I note 
that a prefererence for HTTP: scheme URIs is expressed.  The rationale is 
clear enough -- that the URI should be dereferencable -- but it does raise 
a question in my mind.

Does TAG consider that the HTTP: scheme has a distinguished status among 
URI schemes?  For example, a dereferencable URI might be FTP: or LDAP: or a 
scheme indicating one of a number of other deployed protocols for 
retrieving information.

I submit that one architectural benefit of the IETF DDDS work [1] is that 
it allows separation of naming authority concerns from URI dereferencing 
concerns, thus avoiding the creation of a special /primus inter pares/ 
status for the HTTP: URI scheme simply because the HTTP protocol happens to 
be one of the most widely deployed at this time.

#g
--

[1] http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-urn-ddds-toc-01.txt
     http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-urn-ddds-05.txt
     http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-urn-dns-ddds-database-07.txt
     http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-urn-uri-res-ddds-05.txt 




------------
Graham Klyne
GK@NineByNine.org

Received on Tuesday, 19 February 2002 06:56:09 UTC