Re: namespaceDocument-8: possible interaction with Namespaces in XML 1.1

Tim Bray wrote,
> Paul Cotton wrote:
> > Q2: Your text "URNs are not effectively usable" might lead me to
> > believe that there might be an effort ongoing to standardize how to
> > retrieve resources using URNs.  Do you know of such an effort?
>
> Yes, there are such efforts in the IETF; the acronym doesn't spring
> to mind, but that doesn't matter, because I'm sure that several other
> people will spring forward to explain why URNs are in fact
> retrievable and that TimBL and I are blowing smoke when we claim
> they're not.

;-)

It's DDDS, and Michael Mealling has collected the relevant RFCs here,

  http://www.uri.net/

> I accept that mechanisms in principle exist to dereference URNs, it's
> just that I've never used a computer where such software was
> installed, so it's clearly far from ubiquitous.

It's ubiquitous, just under-exploited. All that's needed is a DNS 
resolver that's a little more flexible than gethostbyname and 
gethostbyaddr.

Cheers,


Miles