Re: [webfinger] Registration of a URN for WebFinger Properties

Will Norris <will@willnorris.com> Thu, 10 October 2013 18:04 UTC

Return-Path: <wnorris@gmail.com>
X-Original-To: webfinger@ietfa.amsl.com
Delivered-To: webfinger@ietfa.amsl.com
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ietfa.amsl.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D81D921E8085 for <webfinger@ietfa.amsl.com>; Thu, 10 Oct 2013 11:04:37 -0700 (PDT)
X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at amsl.com
X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-Spam-Score: -1.977
X-Spam-Level:
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.977 tagged_above=-999 required=5 tests=[BAYES_00=-2.599, FM_FORGED_GMAIL=0.622, HTML_MESSAGE=0.001, NO_RELAYS=-0.001]
Received: from mail.ietf.org ([12.22.58.30]) by localhost (ietfa.amsl.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id ROq68b0NBavQ for <webfinger@ietfa.amsl.com>; Thu, 10 Oct 2013 11:04:34 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from mail-wi0-x22d.google.com (mail-wi0-x22d.google.com [IPv6:2a00:1450:400c:c05::22d]) by ietfa.amsl.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E9AD821E8116 for <webfinger@ietf.org>; Thu, 10 Oct 2013 11:03:57 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by mail-wi0-f173.google.com with SMTP id hq15so10545787wib.0 for <webfinger@ietf.org>; Thu, 10 Oct 2013 11:03:57 -0700 (PDT)
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references:from:date:message-id :subject:to:cc:content-type; bh=T7k0eDvF4MUiI5Mp06ubwsZxfChsb+39LHTdml8jZwY=; b=O2uwppytIl6jK3cOO8qB9BaW3t2Aca5a0KGeBHfLFUJJ5ugrWfJKoT0fY415UmosI0 SmcxYAaVd03Djk/TgWGPwJNfzZfU1muEDT2Uex/BdrDsRHsepoM8SDfWn2EwM249uw9+ rb0HdwJ/w5E5rhVZ55ImtzDsEgD+R1KitybeW9TG5MBiYGmYvrRMKs3Cl/b8hwqYn4F0 ewLfjsmg09rKo36p0y4lA1gce0d9ijNkpqKzJbEZPhU6QsJR/A/hY3z/VDvG4hFqeLA0 u6haqQAWGCQi2J6YgdLwodIyGlPoRhXPR5IIDPGsc1IUUF2K2eGjy5+YgWIThubjrR8A f8ng==
X-Received: by 10.180.208.2 with SMTP id ma2mr8212872wic.52.1381428236959; Thu, 10 Oct 2013 11:03:56 -0700 (PDT)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Sender: wnorris@gmail.com
Received: by 10.194.108.233 with HTTP; Thu, 10 Oct 2013 11:03:26 -0700 (PDT)
In-Reply-To: <CAKaEYh+K-sCu+h=iCeqde=HGjGPaAD52m-WRauvQ+jsOuWGVxg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <em8fca55dc-a3ff-4231-8218-6c2221838850@sydney> <CAKaEYh+n4LCJXevsJ_Y6dc5YnvH75kyQDXVtRV21RbTabCE=Dg@mail.gmail.com> <ebdbafac-19b7-46dc-909e-c2d2b5734574@email.android.com> <CAJqAn3wws1SQvdLSF0bp0DNboeX3gLAn8C2SOKp2KT9RxcOmXQ@mail.gmail.com> <CAKaEYh+K-sCu+h=iCeqde=HGjGPaAD52m-WRauvQ+jsOuWGVxg@mail.gmail.com>
From: Will Norris <will@willnorris.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 11:03:26 -0700
X-Google-Sender-Auth: EFxsCRksqBWsGLGW5qEdYEt8HYQ
Message-ID: <CAJqAn3wZ7JAjjsgOSxA6SWOzerftzJVwEFYxx+xpC_R1+vX8Aw@mail.gmail.com>
To: Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="001a11c38dfc58ca6e04e866d30b"
Cc: "Paul E. Jones" <paulej@packetizer.com>, webfinger <webfinger@ietf.org>
Subject: Re: [webfinger] Registration of a URN for WebFinger Properties
X-BeenThere: webfinger@ietf.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.12
Precedence: list
List-Id: Discussion of the Webfinger protocol proposal in the Applications Area <webfinger.ietf.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/options/webfinger>, <mailto:webfinger-request@ietf.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/webfinger>
List-Post: <mailto:webfinger@ietf.org>
List-Help: <mailto:webfinger-request@ietf.org?subject=help>
List-Subscribe: <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/webfinger>, <mailto:webfinger-request@ietf.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 18:04:38 -0000

On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 10:53 AM, Melvin Carvalho
<melvincarvalho@gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
>
> On 10 October 2013 19:48, Will Norris <will@willnorris.com> wrote:
>
>> There irony here is that WebFinger itself was created to solve the
>> problem of resolving an otherwise unresolvable URI (originally mailto and
>> later acct URIs).  URNs have the same problem, and since they have no
>> well-defined host, you can't even use WebFinger to resolve them.  I know
>> there have been some efforts to define URN resolution (rfc2483 et al), but
>> as far as I know none are very well adopted.  Using HTTP URIs makes the
>> most sense to me.
>>
>> But do we really need yet another registry of properties, the vast
>> majority of which I'm sure have been defined in a dozen other places?  Is
>> there a reason why reusing one of these existing namespaces would not work?
>>  (and if something WebFinger specific really is desirable, then we can
>> continue using webfinger.net, which has already been used for
>> http://webfinger.net/rel/avatar/ and
>> http://webfinger.net/rel/profile-page/.  That was kind of the idea of
>> running it as a static site out of the GitHub "webfinger" org; it's very
>> easy to give others access to everything.  That's what we've done with
>> activitystrea.ms for several years now)
>>
>
> +1
>
> Yes, that's nice but Id suggest it's better to put all the terms in one
> single file to reduce multiple HTTP GETs and maintenance.
>

multiple GETs by whom?  I suspect that these will typically resolve to
human readable descriptions of the properties... I don't imagine they'd be
automatically fetched by anything/anyone.  We could of course embed some
machine readable version of the property in the pages, but even then I'm
not exactly sure what the use-case would be.  That said, I don't actually
have strong feelings on this.


>
> Also I forgot to mention VCard which also covers a lot of terms needed.
>

yep, though I'm not sure if they have URI equivalents for property names.
 There is a URN for the XML namespace (urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:vcard-4.0),
but that's gets us back to where we started.


>
>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 8:16 AM, Paul E. Jones <paulej@packetizer.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Yes, any URI can be used to identify a property. However, there has to
>>> be some agreed scheme and structure for things defined in the IETF. The
>>> point of the suggestion was to specify that.
>>>
>>> We could use HTTP, but I've never seen that scheme used in IETF
>>> documents for this type of thing. I've seen URNs, though.
>>>
>>> Paul
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>> *From:* Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
>>> *Sent:* Sun Oct 06 09:19:42 EDT 2013
>>> *To:* "Paul E. Jones" <paulej@packetizer.com>
>>> *Cc:* webfinger <webfinger@ietf.org>
>>> *Subject:* Re: [webfinger] Registration of a URN for WebFinger
>>> Properties
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 5 October 2013 03:22, Paul E. Jones <paulej@packetizer.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>  Folks,
>>>>
>>>> As you know, properties (both link and subject-specific properties) are
>>>> identified via a URI.  For applications that are defined outside the IETF,
>>>> those organizations are able to define any URI they wish to use.  For any
>>>> we might define within the IETF, however, we need something.
>>>>
>>>> In anticipation of having such a need, I think we should create a
>>>> document along the lines of RFC 6755 for WebFinger.  Specifically, we would
>>>> define a URN sub-namespace as:
>>>>
>>>>    urn:ietf:params:webfinger
>>>>
>>>> One such potentially-useful subject-specific properties are "name",
>>>> which would be the the subject's name intended for human consumption.  If
>>>> you've queried my WebFinger server, you would know I currently advertise my
>>>> name in English and Chinese.  For the "default" name, the URN might be:
>>>>
>>>>    urn:ietf:params:webfinger:name
>>>>
>>>> For language-specific variants, it might be:
>>>>
>>>>     urn:ietf:params:webfinger:name:zh-CN
>>>>
>>>> Defining the various properties and their meaning is an exercise for
>>>> another day, but I hope you see the value in defining the URN sub-namespace.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Cant this be done using traditional HTTP keys.  The advantage being that
>>> they can be systematically dereferenced using http GET, rather than having
>>> to look it up in a central registry in a non machine readable way.  This is
>>> what has been going on for 10+ years, with FOAF, schema.org, open graph
>>> protocol and others.  Have I missed something?
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thoughts?
>>>>
>>>> Paul
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> webfinger mailing list
>>>> webfinger@ietf.org
>>>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/webfinger
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> webfinger mailing list
>>> webfinger@ietf.org
>>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/webfinger
>>>
>>>
>>
>