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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] URI schemes (was Re: URIs harmful)
 Maybe the problem with URIs is the idea of the "scheme" [1]. Take the following URI below: http://www.seairth.com/AbstractResource/ This is a URI that conforms to the "http" scheme. At the same time, this is a URI that identifies a specific resource. Unfortunately, all I want to do is identify the resource with the URI. I do not want it to be dereferenced via http. So, the obvious thing to do is use a different scheme: idea://www.seairth.com/AbstractResource/ However, this has changed my URI. Also, the new URI must (should?) now conform to whatever the "idea" scheme defines for that URI namespace subset. Of course, you could have a scheme who's definition was "this does not dereference. it is just a unique URI string." But then you have the problem that Tim Bray mentioned: > How about for things that you don't have any representations for right > now but plan to in the near future? How about things that you don't > have any way of representing right now, but you might someday? Later, I may want to change my URI back to the first one above. Of course, I would really have two URIs at that point (the "http" and the "idea" one). I could depricate the "newscheme" URI, but we all know how easily that happens. In the end, what I really want is something like this: //seairth.com/AbstractResource This becomes my Scheme-Independent Universal Resource Identifier (SI-URI), totally independent of the scheme. Now, if I should choose to give "http://seairth.com/AbstractResource", one would know to apply the http scheme to it (and presumably dereference it via http). Or, if I gave "ftp://seairth.com/AbstractResource";, one would know to apply the ftp scheme instead. I could even give "idea://seairth.com/AbstractResource", in which case one would apply whatever semantics go with the "idea" scheme. But, when I give "//seairth.com/AbstractResource", one would be able to say "this is a SI-URI. I can reference this resource globally without applying the semantics of a given scheme to it." In all cases, the SI-URI does not change. It always identifies the same resource. I can provide access to the resource by as many or as few schemes as I want without ever changing the global identifier. --- Seairth Jacobs seairth@s... [1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt 
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