[urn] "relative URNs"

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

On 9/5/23 3:15 AM, Julian Reschke wrote:
> On 05.09.2023 10:30, Martin J. Dürst wrote:
>> ...
>> I'm really concerned that starting to use the term "relative URN" in two
>> different ways will cause I lot of confusion. I strongly suggest that
>> the KNX spec do not use the term "relative URN". If it turns out that
>> there's no good other word for the concept, at least make sure that it's
>> always written "KNX relative URN", and that the spec clearly calls out
>> the fact that this is different from "relative URN".
>> ...
> 
> FWIW, what *is* a relative URN?

We had a long discussion about this within the URN WG back in 2015 and 
2016. Part of the conclusion was *not* to define "relative URN" as a 
term of art (you won't find it in RFC 8141) and to say as little as 
possible about base URIs, relative references, etc. It's true that there 
is text in Section 4.3 of RFC 8141, which merely points out that 
applying the algorithm defined in Section 5.2 of RFC 3986 to URNs should 
yield predictable results. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that 
applying the algorithm is a great idea.

IMHO this is not the time or place to relitigate the question of 
"relative URNs" and (with no hats on) I'd strongly discourage use of 
that term, since it is undefined.

Peter