[tei-council] more on facsKey debate
Sebastian Rahtz
sebastian.rahtz at oucs.ox.ac.uk
Tue Feb 9 16:47:42 EST 2010
I asked around at work. The message below is a useful confirmation that
we're not barking mad.
I also see a useful quote from http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt:
"A common misunderstanding of URIs is that they are only used to refer
to accessible resources. The URI itself only provides
identification; access to the resource is neither guaranteed nor
implied by the presence of a URI. Instead, any operation associated
with a URI reference is defined by the protocol element, data format
attribute, or natural language text in which it appears."
Begin forwarded message:
>
> First we should remember that the "protocol" of a URI is not a protocol,
> it is a schema. In many cases it happens to be a protocol too, but that
> is coincidence rather than design. In fact, in an URL it can be an
> indicator of resource type.
>
> Next we need to ask how is the attribute facs defined? Do your docs say
> that it contains an URI, URL or URN?
>
> If an URL then this is, a little evil since URLs are intended to refer
> to the location of a resource. Providing a locator that is not easily
> dereferenced is a problem for clients. However, strictly speaking it is
> legal.
>
> I'll skip URNs as you say you don't want to use them.
>
> So that leaves us with URIs. In theory all schemes should be registered
> with IANA, but in practice unregistered schemes are used. As with URLs
> the fact that processors don't know how to work with unregistered
> schemes is a minor hinderence, a well behaved client will fail
> gracefully. However, they need to know how to.
>
> So, as far as issue a) is concerned, I would suggest you (re)define
> @facs as an URI and allow the use of unregistered schemas. Since URLs
> and URNs are subsets of URIs there would be no backward compatibility
> issues. By defining @facs as a URI you are sending a clear signal to
> client maintainers that they may receive something that does not
> necessarily provide a location for the resource.
>
> With respect to b) URIs, by definition, are not permanent identifiers
> nor are they necessarily unique. For example "../hello.png" is "only
> unique in the processing domain, it is not in any sense a permanent
> identifier".
>
> So, in summary:
>
> Ensure @facs is defined as a URI and encourage people to use world
> unique identifiers and I believe it is not evil.
--
Sebastian Rahtz
Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431
Sólo le pido a Dios
que el futuro no me sea indiferente
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