Re: [apps-discuss] The acct: scheme question

[Graham Klyne <[e-mail]>]

On 28/06/2012 08:28, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
> Should acct: be rejected, we can simply use mailto: as per SWD.  Similarly
> you could simply use ?acct=user@host as has been suggested.

Since my comments with reviewer hat on have been cited, I feel I should 
summarize my personal feelings about the specification of the acct: scheme.

*Reviewer hat OFF*

Roughly, I think the acct: scheme does provide a useful, possibly minor, purpose 
that is not served by other URI schemes, and as such it has reasonable claim to 
meet the bar for registering a new scheme.  But I think the description of the 
acct: scheme in the WebFinger document does a poor job of explaining this; i.e. 
I think there is a document quality issue here around the acct: scheme 
registration/specification.

I've had private exchanges with one of the document editors, but I don't think 
my suggestions have been reflected in the current draft.  In summary, what I 
think is not as clear as it should be in the scheme registration includes:
* what does an acct URI identify
* how are acct URIs allocated; what's the assignment delegation structure?
* how should an acct: URI be dereferenced?  (e.g. if one were used as a link in 
a web page, how should it be handled?).

I suspect that most of this information can be inferred if one has a detailed 
knowledge of WebFinger protocol, but for an average Joe web developer I don't 
think that's really helpful.

I don't think this is a sufficiently important issue for me to engage more 
actively with the discussion.

#g
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