On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 8:37 AM, Dave Cridland <dave(_at_)cridland(_dot_)net>
wrote:
On 27 March 2015 at 03:42, Phillip Hallam-Baker
<phill(_at_)hallambaker(_dot_)com>
I have no idea what you're on about here.
Then why not take a deep breath and read what was written before
making another response?
My concern was very simple. In the plenary it was announced that DOIs
would be added to RFCs. There was then a protest made that 'DOIs are
not URNs' and an assertion that the people proposing them didn't
understand (what was not understood was less clear).
I find this to be a problem for the following reasons:
1) DOIs are very clearly a widely used naming scheme that has
demonstrated considerable utility.
2) It is clear that all sensible requirements for making a DOI: urn
scheme have been met.
3) It seems that the IETF still has not overcome it's principal
obstacle in addressing URI related matters which is the attitude of
many of the self appointed experts. 'Repect mah authoritah' does not
make for a persuasive argument.
Yes, I am one of those people who will on occasion say 'that is
wrong'. But I always say why I think something is wrong. What I find
rather grating and insulting about the topic of naming is that so many
people feel free to say that something is wrong for reasons that they
won't bother to explain. Or the closely related 'this is a very
difficult issue that only a few people understand and I am not one of
them'.
If you don't understand the issue and you don't care, then why respond?
Looking at the DOI people's Web Site I find their reasons for not
applying for a URN scheme is that they don't see the value in
prefixing DOIs with urn:doi: when doi: is clearly sufficient.
My point is simply that that is a perfectly good argument and we
should look for ways that we can bring systems into the URI
infrastructure.
Obviously there are good reasons not to change names already assigned.
The urn: prefix is very much like the x-header in this respect. Those
http: URLs have obviously stuck in the XACML spec because there was no
value in changing an existing registration.
But we don't need to keep demanding the same mistake be made over. The
urn: scheme is clearly causing confusion. Lets clear the confusion by
registering the scheme the IETF already uses (ISSN) and is about to
use (DOI) as top level schemes.
We should define URI schemes for DOI, UPC and ISSN and make them all top
level.
That is an entirely different matter, and one that I struggle to care about.
So why respond in such a ridiculous fashion?
That is, I don't care whether new registrations use a urn: prefix or not;
"urn:" might make clear that these are non-resolvable, I certainly dislike
the endless urn:ietf:dragons:xml-params:beware:of:the:leopard style of URN
the IETF seems to prefer to mint, but really there's more important things
in life, like whether I should put that pasty in the microwave about now. (I
think I probably should).
Perhaps you could explain how little you care in some more detail?
On the other hand, bombastically declaring that "urn:" should be stripped
everywhere without any further thought is, I think, very short-sighted; more
so in the face of obvious examples of problems.
Did I write an Internet Draft suggesting that? If so I have forgotten
having done so. Quite possible of course. I do write quite a few of
them. And I can write a draft pretty quickly now that I have rfctool
that lets me compose them in Word.
Ah no, I did not. I see what happened now. You read my post and got
worried that as so frequently happens in the IETF, a post submitted to
the ietf discuss list based on conversations in the bar the night
before is likely to become an RFC before the week is out if nobody
gets on the case immediately.
Yes; these are references to LDAP attributes, and are of the form
http://www.ietf.org/... rfcXXX.txt#attributeName. I'm in no way trying to
claim this is sensible.
Take a look at the identifiers for int32 etc.