# Re: Internet Draft on URNs

Ed Krol (krol@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu)
Sun, 16 May 1993 12:16:55 -0500

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    Date: Sun, 16 May 1993 12:16:55 -0500

    From: Ed Krol <krol@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>

    Message-Id: <199305161716.AA11496@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>

    To: krol@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu, winograd@interval.com

    Subject: Re: Internet Draft on URNs

>This argument is intuitively right but it loses the important distinctions
>that were made in separating URI, URL and URN and keeping each of them
>faithful to its particular function. There are three distinct kinds of
>information that are useful in citations:

> 1) Where can I get it? (URL)
> 2) How do I know if it's a particular item? (URN)
> 3) What is useful to know about it? (URI)

>In print media there is a long tradition of using things like footnotes,
>bibliographies, etc. to include all these kinds of information in a
>human-readable document. Conventions vary as to whether the string
>appearing in the text is something like "Sally Jones, Everything You Always
>Wanted to Know About RFC822, 1985" or "Jones, 1985" or "[Jo85]" or "^4"
>(that's a superscripted footnote or endnote number). In the latter cases
>it is assumed that the document follows a standard way of linking the
>reference to a fuller citation.

Right and all I am saying is that by picking the encoding of
the URN wisely (with some URI type information) it makes the whole
thing a bit more useful.

>Given the much more effective means we have for linking things in
>electronic media, it seems that this model can work and give the
>flexibility that is lacking in trying to go with any one of the information
>types above.

One thing to consider is how useful is a document when the network
isn't available. If I download a document to my laptop to read
on a plane, do I want no clue as to references until I can
plug the things in and get URN translations.

I understand what you said about there not being a standard for
citations and there might be different types. However, part of the
problem is that the tools to standardize upon aren't yet. When they
are there I would bet you start seeing a lot of local standards biased
toward URNs, because they are the most longstanding.

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