Hello Stephen,
On 2012/06/26 20:26, Stephen Farrell wrote:
Hi again Martin,
On 06/26/2012 12:11 PM, "Martin J. Dürst" wrote:
So the question is really, what's the use case, and what's just a
consequence of that use case. If confirmation of already available
resources (e.g. like a fingerprint) is the (main?) use case, and the
greater weight on "speakability" just a design consequence, then it
makes sense to have two separate things.
Yes, confirmation is the main current use-case for nih as I understand
it and have said previously.
I sincerely wish you had said this so clearly much, much earlier, or
even better that it had been in the draft in cristal clear language. We
could have avoided a lot of useless discussion.
(Of course the resource might not yet
be present, so "already available" isn't quite right, but that's a
nit.)
Have we beaten this to death sufficiently now? I hope so;-)
If you want to suggest a sentence that says that, feel free.
I really don't think it should be my job to explain this. There are
enough coauthors on the draft who should be in a much better position
than myself to write such text :-(.
Anyway, here is a try:
- In the abstract, replace "and binary and human "speakable" formats for
these names" by ", a binary form, and a form for confirming the presence
(or absence) of resources".
- In the introduction, replace "and a
human-speakable text form that could be used, e.g. for reading out
(parts of) the name over a voice connection." with
"and a form optimized for confirming the presence (or absence) of
resources by humans.".
- Change the title of Section 7 from "Human-speakable Format" to "Format
for Resource Confirmation"
- Replace the first sentence at the start of Section 7 to say:
There is often a need for humans to confirm that a particular resource,
e.g. a public key, is already present, or to discover its absence.
- Change "("speaking" the value of an ni URI)" to "confirm the presence
or absence of a resource")
- Nuke the second paragraph of section 7 (the one that starts with "The
justification for using a URI"). The stuff it says about IDNs, for
example, isn't really appropriate for IETF standardization.
- In the example section, change "Human-speakable form of a name" to
"Form for resource confirmation" (three occurrences).
I'd also change the "nih:" scheme to something like "fingerprint:", and
allow the insertion of delimiter characters (allowing e.g.
nih:3;5326-9057-e12f-e2b7-4ba0-7c89-2560a2;f instead of
nih:3;53269057e12fe2b74ba07c892560a2;f because the former should be much
easier to manipulate by humans), but I guess I'd again be shot down for
"proposing something like this at such a late date" (I note we are still
in IETF Last Call).
Regards, Martin.