# Re: "Why isn't IETF using FPIs?"

David G. Durand (dgd@cs.bu.edu)
Thu, 20 Oct 1994 22:36:54 -0500

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    Message-Id: <199410210224.WAA16587@cs.bu.edu>

    Date: Thu, 20 Oct 1994 22:36:54 -0500

    To: Steve_Strasen.ES_AE@xerox.com, uri@bunyip.com

    From: "David G. Durand" <dgd@cs.bu.edu> (David G. Durand)

    Subject: Re: "Why isn't IETF using FPIs?"

>I'm showing my ignorance, but at a meeting today I was pressed rather
>hard about why the Internet community is ignoring the work in ISO
>standards in identifying Formal Public Identifiers or some such such
>as are deployed in 'bento'; it's an existing naming structure, allows
>the generation of new IDs by obtaining an ISBN number, etc.
>
As an "SGML guy" (though not the sort of SGML-zealot one sometimes sees,
I hope), I have also been wondering this. Particularly given the limited
use of SGML in WWW, the ISO naming stuff which is integrated with SGML
seems a natural (at least for that application). Here's some possibly
relevant info:

The ISO FPIs are defined in ISO 9070. They are based on a two part structure:
+ naming authority
+ object identifier
Each of these can be split into multiple hierarchical parts (allowing
for complex object names and delegation of naming authorities). Root
authorities can be assigned based on ISBN publisher numbers at the moment.
The character set that can be used is case-insensitive and also restricted
to be highly portable across national character sets. The syntax is
character-based, rather than simply describing a sequence of octets.

There are only two objections to the FPI standard as far as I can tell,
based on the URN requirements doc. The first is a somewhat ugly syntax:
"//" to delimit the two major parts, and "::" to delimit fields within each
item. The second is an arbitrary length restriction 100 chars for
authority, 120 chars for object name -- seemingly chosen so that the
corresponding SGML identifiers come to less than 250 characters.

This last restriction is something that could be changed pretty easily
through the ISO, I think, especially as the harmonization with the internet
would appeal to the part of ISO that developed the FPI standards. (i.e. it
was _not_ developed as part of OSI).

It seems that the syntactic flexibility of the FPIs is sufficient to handle
any naming needs I've seen proposed here, and the hierarchical authority
assignment should be pretty scalable and decentralizable.

I suppose a final objection would be that there is as yet no software
specially designed to resolve these to URLs, but there isn't for any other
scheme either.

I'm afraid I leave for CSCW tomorrow afternoon. I'll happily answer any
questions about the standard on my return, for those of you who don't want
to fork over whatever ISO wants for this quite short document.

-- David

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