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Houghton,Andrew writes: > > > Take, for instance, DOIs. What do you see in the wild? Do > > > you ever see info:uris (except in OpenURLs)? If you don't see > > > http://dx.doi.org/ URIs you generally see doi:10... URIs. It > > > seems like having http and info URIs would *have* to be fine, > > > since info:uris *not being dereferenceable* are far less > > > useful (I won't go so far as 'useless') on the web, which is > > > where all this is happening. > > > > What on earth does dereferencing have to do with this? > > > > We're talking about an identifier. > > Exactly, that is what people don't understand about RFC 3986. URIs > are just identifiers and have nothing to do with dereferencing. > Dereferencing only comes into play when the URI is used with an > actual protocol like HTTP. The only thing the http:, e.g., URI > scheme, starting the URI tells you is what the syntax of the rest > of the URI looks like. This is where the authors of info URIs > missed the boat. They conflated the URI scheme, e.g., http:, with > dereferencing and used it as a justification for a new URI scheme. > The authors were told of that misconception before info became an > RFC by both the IETF and W3C [...] ... and by me, for what's it's worth (remember, Ray? :-)) ... > [...], but they decided to proceed anyway creating another library > specific standard that no one else will use. > > If people would just follow the prescribed practice by the W3C: > > <http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/> > Architecture of the Web says: > > 2.3.1. URI aliases > > Best practice: "A URI owner SHOULD NOT associate arbitrarily > different URIs with the same resource." > > 2.4. URI Schemes > > Best practice: "A specification SHOULD reuse an existing URI scheme > (rather than create a new one) when it provides the desired > properties of identifiers and their relation to resources." True -- it's all there. The problem is that, after setting up a non-dereferencable http: URI to name something like an XML namespace or a CQL context set, it's just so darned _tempting_ to put something explanatory at the location which happens to be indicated by that URI :-) _/|_ ___________________________________________________________________ /o ) \/ Mike Taylor <[log in to unmask]> http://www.miketaylor.org.uk )_v__/\ "You can also join us online at www.msnbc.com. You know, I'm always afraid I'm going to say too many Ws." -- NBC news anchorman Tom Brokaw.