Protocol Action: URN Syntax to Proposed Standard

[The IESG <[e-mail]>]

  The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft "URN Syntax"
  <draft-ietf-urn-syntax-04.txt> as a Proposed Standard. This document
  is the product of the Uniform Resource Names Working Group. The IESG
  contact persons are Keith Moore and Harald Alvestrand.


Technical Summary

   Uniform Resource Names (URNs) are intended to serve as persistent,
   location-independent, resource identifiers.  This is in contrast
   with Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) which typically have short
   lifetimes and are tied to a particular resource location.

   This document specifies the syntax to be used for URNs, the
   requirements for transmission of URNs, and the use of the
   URN syntax for both new and pre-existing namespaces.

   The syntax described in this document is compatible with URL
   syntax (for ease of adding URN support to applications which
   already support URLs).

Working Group Summary

   There has been considerable discussion in the working group,
   regarding the compatibility of URNs with URLs (including the
   notion of relative URNs) and the possible internationalization
   of URNs.  This document leaves relative URNs (with syntax
   compatible with that of URLs) for future study, by reserving
   the '/' character.  Internationalization is also left undefined,
   but this document specifies that URNs must be transmitted in
   a pure-ASCII representation, and that all URN aware applications
   must make URNs available for display in the pure-ASCII form
   to enable reliable transcription by humans.

   With these compromises, there is strong working group consensus
   on the document.

Protocol Quality

   Keith Moore reviewed the specification for IESG.