On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 11:48:27AM -0400, Clark C . Evans wrote: > I'm looking for a URN scheme that uses DNS for uniqueness (perhaps in > conjunction with a date) but doesn't have any attached semantics. I'm > asking this beacuse XML has the "duck" problem. It uses URIs for > namespace names, but only the URI syntax (for uniqueness), thus you see > lots of http:// namespace names but the author never intended to support > the retrieval of content given the namespace name. Anyway, this is icky. > What XML really wanted was a URN that is based on DNS. As it turns out > YAML (http://yaml.org) has exactly the same situation, only we are in > a position to do this correctly. So, I was thinking something like... > > dnsurn://clarkevans.com/2002/my-data-type#my-format > > Thus, the scheme follows *exactly* the syntax of HTTP (to keep learning > curve down) only that the date is required immediately following the > domain name. The advantage of this over http is that it doesn't look > like a duck... "dnsurn" is not "http". A further advantage is that > someone can use everything to the right of the dnsurn: as a http: URL > if they wish by just replacing the scheme. > > I'm completely dogged for time... if something like this is possible > how hard would it be? I'm not looking forward to having the equivalent > of "XML namespaces considered harmful" threads on our YAML list and > thing something like this would serve to help not only YAML but also > XML... It sounds like you want the 'duri' namespace currently going through the process. It was written by Larry Masinter and is currently here: http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-masinter-dated-uri-03.txt The URN is of the form: urn:duri:<date>:<encoded-URI> Examples: urn:duri:2001:http://www.ietf.org urn:tdb:20010814142327:file://this.example.com/c|/temp/test.txt urn:tdb:2001:data:,The%2520US%2520president etc... -MM -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Mealling | Vote Libertarian! | urn:pin:1 michael@neonym.net | | http://www.neonym.net