# Re Revised URN

Terry Allen (terry@ora.com)
Sat, 14 May 1994 07:31:26 PDT

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    Message-Id: <199405141431.HAA01362@rock>

    From: Terry Allen <terry@ora.com>

    Date: Sat, 14 May 1994 07:31:26 PDT

    To: uri@bunyip.com

    Subject: Re Revised URN

Apologies if this arrives late; we're having some server difficulty.

A nit and a possibly substantive objection:

On uniqueness, it is clear from the later part of the document that
you mean that a given URN has only one meaning, but this phrasing
could be taken to mean that a given resource may have only one URN.
Can you tweak the wording a bit to avoid confusion??
. . .
| uniform resource names (URN), uniform resource characteristics (URC),
| and uniform resource locators (URL). A URN identifies a resource or
| unit of information. It may identify, for example, intellectual
| content, a particular presentation of intellectual content, or
| whatever a name assignment authority determines is a uniquely namable
^^^^^^^^
| entity. A URL identifies the location or a container for an instance
. . .
| With this in mind, we can make the following statement:
| o The purpose or function of a URN is to provide a globally unique,
^^^^^^
| persistent identifier used both for recognition and often for
| access to characteristics of or access to the resource.
. . .
Recognition in free text.

| o Text recognition: URNs must be recognizable as URNs in free text.

This cannot possibly be guaranteed, especially given the global scope of
the proposed architecture. You cannot forbid people from using heedlessly
whatever magic prefix and wrapper is decided upon for URNs, nor can
you be sure no one ever used it in what will become legacy documents
w/r to this scheme. Accordingly, this requirement should be dropped.

Regards,

    --
    Terry Allen  (terry@ora.com)
    Editor, Digital Media Group
    O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
    Sebastopol, Calif., 95472

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