Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 10:09:59 -700 (PST)
From: Mitra <mitra@pandora.sf.ca.us>
Subject: Re: URN syntax
To: timbl@www0.cern.ch
In-Reply-To: <9404280758.AA01708@ptpc00.cern.ch>
Message-Id: <Pine.3.89.9404281036.C18699-0100000@pandora.sf.ca.us>
On Thu, 28 Apr 1994, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
> > Just for the record - as one of the people who proposed that the URN
> > format should be hierarchical with NO seperation between
> > publisher/naming authority and opaque string, I have been convinced by
> > PeterD of the error-of-my-ways, and now think only that the
> > publisher-i/naming-authority field should be hierarchical, so formats
> > along the lines of.
> What was Peter's argument? Maybe he can convince me too.
My thinking was that a publisher could split up their address space
transparently, as Peter explained his objections to that, I realised that
a publisher can still do that - note the publisher field must still
remain hierarchical. Under my scheme they had to think about ways they
might want to split it when they assigned URNs - for example "collins" might
assign an opaque id of "uk/12345", now all they need to do is put the
"uk" onto their publisher id. So the pubid field becomes "collins/uk" and
the opaque id remains "12345". Since all that "collins/uk" has to do is
register with the registered owner of "collins" and ensure that
"uk.collins.uri.int" is in the DNS, then this retains the flexibility to
split up ones namespace how one wants.
- Mitra