To: uri@bunyip.com
Subject: reply to various on URNs and URLs
From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
Message-Id: <94Feb18.171222pst.2732@golden.parc.xerox.com>
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 1994 17:12:16 PST
We've been off-net for a few days, and the backlog is just now
trickling in. I'm off until next Tuesday, but as a few placeholders:
* I would be just as happy not to review the URL-prefix issue at
this time.
* I'd be happy if there were a companion function-requirements
document for URNs. Many of the requirements are the same, some are
different.
* Karin Sollins handed me the 'baton' for the URN-requirements
document. I'm in the process of folding various comments and
corrections into it in response to the mail on the issue, but don't
have it (or comments about it) ready yet. The hard issues are
`sameness' and `caching'.
I think we should take seriously the role of `Location Independent
File Name' (LIFN) that some people seem to have a desire for, and
consider that, outside of the possibility that the same URN might
identify two sets of bits that were not the same bits but considered
the `same' by the publisher, that the requirements we've identified
for URNs are the same as the requirements for LIFNs.
LIFNs are useful for determining whether a cache is valid, as well as
dealing with resource replication.
I think we should consider whether we might have two kinds of URNs:
those that act as LIFNs and those that do not. (I hate to introduce
yet another kind of identifier in the UR... series).