Re: [urn] CTS and CITE2 URNs

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

On 3/4/19 11:58 PM, Hakala, Juha E wrote:

> I am in favour of registering these namespaces. The only reservation I have is the usage of "@" to separate subreferences. Would it be possible to use hash character for this purpose? 
> 
> At https://cite-architecture.github.io/ohco2/quick/ 
> 
> the researchers themselves give the following example: 
> 
> urn:cts:greekLit:tlg5026.msA.hmt:1.2.lemma#μῆνις
Parsing according to urn:cts:SUBNAMESPACE:WORK:PASSAGE@SUBREFERENCE as
defined in the registration request, we get:

SUBNAMESPACE = `greekLit`
WORK = `tlg5026.msA.hmt`
PASSAGE = `1.2.lemma#μῆνις`
SUBREFERENCE (none)

Is that correct?

A follow-on observation. As the genesis of the CTS and CITE2 namespaces
within the Homer Multitext project indicates, it might be desirable for
literal strings in the NSS to include characters outside the ASCII range
(e.g., `μῆνις`). I suspect that such strings would be limited to the
PASSAGE and SUBREFERENCE constructs, but perhaps the registrants could
clarify that for us. In any case, here it seems that "the nature of the
particular URN namespace makes such characters necessary" (RFC 8141, §2.2).

However, the same section of RFC 8141 also clearly states:

   In particular, with regard to characters outside the ASCII range,
   URNs that appear in protocols or that are passed between systems MUST
   use only Unicode characters encoded in UTF-8 and further encoded as
   required by RFC 3986.

As far as I can see, this implies that the foregoing PASSAGE value needs
to be encoded as follows:

`1.2.lemma#%CE%BC%E1%BF%86%CE%BD%CE%B9%CF%82`

Unfortunately, that's not as user-friendly for people who know the
language of the source text from which the literal string is taken.

(Yes, the URNBIS Working Group had lengthy discussions about whether to
allow non-percent-encoded Unicode characters outside the ASCII range in
the URN syntax, and ultimately decided against it.)

Peter