W3C TAG Questions on Draft #2 of XRI Resolution V 2.0

I am writing on behalf of the World Wide Web Consortium Technical 
Architecture Group (TAG).  The purpose of this note is to pose to you some 
questions that arose during our discussion of "Committee draft 2 of 
Extensible Resource Identifier (XRI) Resolution Version 2.0" [1].   It is 
possible that the TAG would later wish to offer some comments and 
suggestions regarding XRI and its relationship to the architecture of the 
Web, but first we feel we need to better understand the intended uses of 
XRI.  We apologise for engaging in reviewing your work so late, and we 
hope and trust that you will remain open to further questions and comment 
from us as our review progresses.

We would very much appreciate it if you could clarify whether we have read 
the XRI Resolution specification correctly in inferring that:

1) All access to resources identified by XRIs
   require (at least) two round trips, the
   first to retrieve metadata (XRDS, XRD or
   uri list) and the second to retrieve
   (a representation of) the resource itself?

2) HTTP content negotiation can be used in
   requests for XRIs to force either metadata
   return or redirection to actual resource
   representations?

3) Relative XRIs are of course allowed in the
   normal way when a full-form XRI has been
   established as the base URI.  Are they also
   allowed _without_ any full-form XRI as a
   base URI?  That is, for example, is "=henry"
   intended to be recognize as an XRI in the
   absence of any base URI?  If so, what is
   being done to ensure that both now and in
   the future, the syntax of such abbreviated
   XRIs is coordinated with (I.e. remains
   disjoint from) the syntax of both absolute
   and relative URIs that might be used in the
   same contexts?

Also, could you let us know what steps, if any, you have taken towards 
registration of 'xri' as a URI scheme with the IETF?

Thank you very much for your attention to these questions.

(Note that this email has been bcc:'d to the www-tag@w3.org public mailing 
list.  bcc: has been used to avoid the problems inherent in email threads 
that are cross posted on multiple lists.  Please note, however, that 
members of the TAG and many members of the community who work with us are 
unlikely to monitor responses sent only to the xri-comments list. 
Accordingly, if you wish correspondence to be seen by the TAG, we encourge 
you to send it to the www-tag@w3.org list.)

Noah Mendelsohn
For the World Wide Web Consortium Technical Architecture Group (TAG)

[1] 
http://docs.oasis-open.org/xri/2.0/specs/cd02/xri-resolution-V2.0-cd-02.html



--------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn 
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
--------------------------------------

Received on Friday, 1 February 2008 19:04:03 UTC