Re: [apps-discuss] Looking at Webfinger

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

On 7/2/12 11:47 PM, Mark Nottingham wrote:

> * First and foremost, why use host-meta? What value does adding this
> extra step to the dance bring, beyond "We've defined it, therefore we
> must use it?"
> 
> As I think I've said many times before, the whole point of a
> .well-known URI is to group like uses together, to avoid having a
> "dictionary" resource that gets bloated with many application's
> unrelated data, thereby overburdening clients with too much
> information (especially when they're constrained, e.g., mobile).
> 
> As such, host-meta is a spectacularly bad example of a well-known
> URI. Defining a end-all-be-all well-known-URI kind of removes the
> point of having a registry, after all...
> 
> Instead, why not just define a NEW well-known URI for user data? That
> has a more constrained scope, and saves one round trip (or more).
> E.g.,
> 
> GET /.well-known/webfinger?user=bob%40example.com HTTP/1.0 Host:
> example.com
> 
> I.e., let webfinger define the URI template to use. Yes, some
> implementations might want to come up with crazy URIs, but is that
> really a problem we want to solve?
> 
> Astute observers will notice that this approach removes the need for
> an ACCT URI scheme (at least here).

Mark, that seems like a reasonable approach. I have no strong attachment
to 'acct' URIs, and removing one step in the dance makes some sense. In
particular, I echo your question: is host-meta doing something special
for us here that we can't do with a well-known URI for webfinger?

Peter

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