ModSAX feature naming (was: SAX: ModSAX addition, general ...)

[Toby Speight]

David> David Megginson <URL:mailto:david at megginson.com>

[I accidentally mailed this to David; it was meant for the list.
Sorry, David.]

0> In article <14052.19853.887104.987727 at localhost.localdomain>, David
0> wrote:

David> I've been thinking about this issue, and I'm fairly convinced
David> that the URI is the right choice.

I agree with this much.


David> Think of the URI a statement of ownership.  Assume that my ISP
David> is host.net, and that I've been allocated 5MB of web space at
David> http://host.net/foo/.

Okay, you own that name subspace *at this moment in time*.  Who will
have the right to create names below that next March?  Five years from
now?  A hundred years from now?  Persistent uniqueness of names is the
core work of the URN group, and the consensus there is that DNS names
are a poor basis for any kind of URN (and what we want is exactly what
URNs are for: naming things).

If you are saying that the use of URLs as names is just a stopgap
until the URN registration stuff is sorted, then I'll accept that, but
be aware of the precedent you're setting with the initial "well-known"
feature names.



David> I am the only one who has the right to make a resource available at
David> http://host.net/foo/, so I am the one who has the (moral) right to
David> construct feature IDs based on http://host.net/foo/.

At this instant...

David> It is not sufficient simply to use the domain name "host.net",
David> because I don't own the domain (someone else could construct
David> the same feature ID), and it is not sufficient to use something
David> starting with net.host.foo, because I *don't* have the right to
David> make something available at, say, ftp://host.net/foo/ --

Nor do you own the host "foo.host.net"

In summary, I think URNs are a good fit, but not necessarily other
kinds of URI.


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