Correction Re: The case against URNs

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
>...
> 
> The point of view that Micah expresses is very common. I've made more or 
> less the "now:" proposal on a variety of occasions, to the point of 
> starting to register a URN namespace.

Sorry, looking back through the thread, I see that Micah did mean for 
"now" to be essentially dereferencerable by changing the "now:" to 
"http:", which makes it different than a URN. I was looking at the wrong 
message for his proposal.

Nevertheless, I hope I did answer this part of your message:

 > Maybe a "now://" is functionally the same as a urn://  and all the
 > problems with URNs re-emerge (I dunno, because I never understood the 
 > argument against using URNs to name abstractions ...)

If "now:" is really dereferencable through a string-rewriting then it is 
really more like "http:.../#" than like "urn:". I expect that Roy 
Fielding will have the same complaints about the former that he does 
about the latter: that it is unnecessary because Web URIs can already 
represent abstract things.

  Paul Prescod

Received on Sunday, 6 October 2002 19:56:55 UTC