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

[Peter Saint-Andre <[e-mail]>]

On 6/28/12 10:53 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
> On 6/28/12 5:09 AM, Graham Klyne wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> Graham, I think you're right about the fact that these matters are
> underspecified. I hereby offer to propose some text, and will do that in
> the next few days.

I went beyond proposing text and decided to write a standalone I-D:

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-saintandre-acct-uri/

Graham, I think that text answers the questions you posed, hopefully in
an accurate way.

Feedback is welcome.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/