Re: Registration of acct: as a URI scheme has been requested

On 25 June 2012 14:28, Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 10:35 PM, Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com>wrote:
>
>> On 6/22/12 1:02 PM, Harry Halpin wrote:
>>
>>> It seems like it would be better to use just mailto: (i.e., the
>>> original WebFinger design was around *email addresses*, not accounts per
>>> se) or a http: URI rather than mint a whole new scheme.
>>>
>> Here's why mailto: won't work. Most user agents will invoke an email
>> client app. Remember, this is about using the URI as a name rather than
>> data locator or access mechanism. That's the reason my acct: is required.
>> Basically, follow-your-nose linked data traversal (with alternative URI
>> resolvers hooked in via host-metadata pattern usage) without unintended
>> consequences i.e., de-reference the next chunk of data etc...
>
>
> Just to be clear, WebFinger is optimizing around Linked Data
> "follow-your-nose" pattern? Somehow I find this unlikely at this stage in
> the game, but you never know.
>

> I thought it was just using the email address to track down a domain to
> some info about capabilities supported by the domain, and thus was never
> actually dereferencing the email address in a web-browser.
>

The ideas and authors have changed slightly in 3 years since its original
form.  WebFinger started by addressing a gap that additional information
about an email address was not easily obtainable.  More recently it has
become a general discovery app.

It uses a combination of "follow your nose" and the "well known" pattern.

It's possible to use webfinger with any URI, e.g. mailto: http: etc. but
the new scheme acct: is recommended.  acct: at this point (and probably
going forward) will be playing catchup to those that use HTTP (eg
facebook).  And there will be those caught in the world where they now will
have two identifiers both acct: and http: to represent the subject of an
email address.  But Web Arch handles this already with owl : sameAs.


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>> --
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Kingsley Idehen
>> Founder & CEO
>> OpenLink Software
>> Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
>> Personal Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/**blog/~kidehen<http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/%7Ekidehen>
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