xml-dev - RE: Just require URLs

["Didier PH Martin" <martind@netfolder.com>]

Hi Jonathan,

Jonathan said:
    Under the definition of URN in 2396, a URN is any URI whose intention is
to reference an abstract resource, act primarily as a name, and/or not be
retrievable via a network. Under the definition in 2396, "urn" defines a
scheme/namespace (URI namespace) whose intention is to serve *only* for
URNs, however the spec suggests that any scheme e.g. "http" can serve to
define a URN, given the definition of URN in 2396 (part of which my earlier
message quotes).

    So, my reading of RFC 2396 and the XML namespace spec leads me to
conclude that all URIs used as XML namespaces are properly URNs regardless
of the URI scheme prefix.

Didier says:
This is not what RFC 2396 says. You are right when you say that a URI coudl
be a URL or a URN. However a HTTP scheme cannot be considered as a URN
because it is already part of the URL space.

If however you create a name space having as NID "HTTP" then yes this would
be a URN. However each "/" would have to be encoded. Thus, a URN cannot be
with "/" as delimiters. Obviously we'll have to create a new RFC for
hierarchical name spaces having "/" as delimiters but actually you would
have to encode each "/". Thus your name space would look like:

urn:http:domain.com%(hex for /)context%(hex for /)etc...

The above URN confor to RFC 2141 specs. However the URL:
http://domain.com/context/etc... do not conform to RFC 2141 and thus cannot
be said to be a URN.

regards
Didier PH Martin
mailto:martind@netfolder.com
http://www.netfolder.com


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