Re: URN UUID question

[Sandro Hawke <[e-mail]>]

On 03/24/2014 05:20 PM, Joel Kalvesmaki wrote:
> Dear Sandro,
>
> I would like people who do not own or have access to a domain name to 
> be able to mint names. Further, it's important that names be valid for 
> centuries to come.
>
> Another important but less critical point is that HTTP URIs give the 
> impression that one can and should get more information about the item 
> by making an HTTP request to that string. But the majority of things 
> named in my data model would have no further online representation, 
> and it would be nice to avoid giving readers of data the impression 
> that there are or editors of the data the impression that they ought 
> to be writing and providing supplementary RDF. The naming system I 
> adopt needs to be immediately intelligible to ordinary people. And 
> when most people see a URL they don't think about names, they think 
> about locations to visit--it can be very confusing, even to very 
> intelligent people.
>
> My concerns are akin to those that have motivated the architects of 
> Canonical Text Services[1][2][3] to develop the convention 
> "urn:cts:……" to provide names for ancient literary works, their 
> fragments, and their versions. their naming scheme stands independent 
> of server performance, etc. But it also can be easily incorporated 
> into registries that facilitate Semantic Web applications.
>
> I would appreciate reading reflections and reactions from you and 
> others on this list.
>

It seems to me like nice, working URLs are always good to have.   I do 
understand sometimes they are too expensive, though, yes.

       -- Sandro

> Best wishes,
>
> jk
>
> [1] http://www.homermultitext.org/hmt-doc/cite/cts-urn-overview.html
> [2] Smith, Neel. “Citation in Classical Studies.” /Digital Humanities 
> Quarterly/3, no. 1 (2009). 
> http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/003/1/000028/000028.html.
> [3] Smith, Neel, and C. W. Blackwell. “Four URLs, Limitless Apps: 
> Separation of Concerns in the Homer Multitext Architecture.” In /Donum 
> Natalicium Digitaliter Confectum Gregorio Nagy Septuagenario a 
> Discipulis Collegis Familiaribus Oblatum: A Virtual Birthday Gift 
> Presented to Gregory Nagy on Turning Seventy by His Students, 
> Colleagues, and Friends/. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic 
> Studies, 2012. 
> http://chs.harvard.edu/wa/pageR?tn=ArticleWrapper&bdc=12&mn=4846.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 7:44 AM, Sandro Hawke <[e-mail] 
> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>
>     On 03/24/2014 12:48 PM, "Martin J. Dürst" wrote:
>
>         On 2014/03/20 09:15, Joel Kalvesmaki wrote:
>
>             I need unique, persistent names. The name needs to be a
>             single IRI/URI to
>             allow any version of any document to be named easily in
>             any RDF
>             declarations any third party might want to make.
>
>
>             After reading the specs on the tag URN, I'm very
>             impressed, and think that
>             it will suit the XML model nicely. Tag URNs provide two
>             extra bonuses I
>             hadn't anticipated: human readability and decentralized
>             unique agent
>             identification.
>
>             I do wish IRI forms of tag URNs had gotten off the ground,
>             but maybe that
>             will come some day?
>
>
>         Looking at https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4151, that indeed
>         seems to be an unfortunate oversight.
>
>         Instead of
>         >>>>
>            In the interests of tractability to humans, tags SHOULD NOT
>         be minted
>            with percent-encoded parts.  However, the tag syntax does allow
>            percent-encoded characters in the "pchar" elements (defined
>         in RFC
>            3986 [1]).
>         >>>>
>
>         It should allow percent-encoded parts also in the
>         authorityName part, and specify that in all cases, such
>         percent-encoded parts must be created and interpreted using
>         UTF-8. After all, that's what RFC 3986 (which is heavily
>         cited) says for authority names.
>
>
>     Interesting.   I'm trying to remember the motivations here.
>
>     Certainly unnecessary percent encoding is a problem because it
>     causes confusion about whether two URIs are the same. (If you have
>     to ask that, they are not.   But people may not realize that.  
>     Some people might think "tag:[e-mail]
>     <mailto:[e-mail]>,2014:A" and "tag:[e-mail]
>     <mailto:[e-mail]>,2014:%41" are the same, but they
>     are not.)
>
>     On the authorityName, if it's a DNSName, presumably you'd use
>     punycode, not percent encoding, right?   If it's an emailAddress,
>     presumably you'd use punycode for the DNSname part of it.  I don't
>     know what one's supposed to use for the part before the @ in an
>     email address?      I haven't kept up on the email standards.  
>      Is there consensus about that?
>
>
>         Sandro, Tim, is there a chance this can be fixed sooner or later?
>
>
>     I'm not using or endorsing tag: URIs at all these days. From my
>     perspective, http or https URLs are better in very-nearly every
>     situation.    But I wouldn't be opposed to someone else updating
>     the tag URI spec.
>
>     Joel, can I ask why you can't or don't want to use an http or
>     https URL instead of a tag?
>
>          -- Sandro
>
>         Regards, Martin.
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Joel Kalvesmaki
> kalvesmaki.com <http://kalvesmaki.com>