Date: Thu, 16 Sep 93 07:38:03 -1000
From: aboba@internaut.com (Bernard D. Aboba)
Message-Id: <9309161738.AA00977@internaut.com>
To: uri@bunyip.com
Subject: Versioning?
Just as an aside, I am wondering what the consensus is on when revision
of a document requires a new URN. There are documents that may be
revised quite frequently (such as the PDIAL listings) for which generating
a new URN with every rev might be an inconvenience. Also, the user will
probably just want "the latest," not the March 3, 1993 version of PDIAL.
In theory systems like ISBN require a new ISBN # assignment with each
new edition. However, corrections to an existing edition do not require
a new ISBN assignment. At times, publishers have substantially updated
or corrected books without assigning a new ISBN #. This was done so as
not to have to undertake the expense of flushing books from retailer
shelves, launching an advertising campaign for the new edition, etc.
for what was essentially an evolutionary change.
This approach would imply assignment of a new URN only for major
revisions, with the distinction between major and minor revisions
to be made by the publisher.
Also I am wondering about automated systems for maintaining URN
entries. A test case might be the FAQ maintenance system, which
might be modified to automatically generate URNs for new FAQs,
as well as to expire them, based on the headers of messages sent
to the moderator of news.answers. The FAQ system is also a decent
test case for versioning, since major changes to the FAQs require
approval of the news.answers moderator, while minor ones (such as
new postings) are auto-approved.
Also, the question has come up on the FAQ Maintainers list about
use of : within file names. This is an issue since the filenames
of FAQs stored on rtfm.mit.edu are based on the subject lines,
which often have : within them. So the question came up as to
how to escape this and other potentially burdensome characters.