Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1993 08:37:51 -0500
Message-Id: <199306041337.AA15104@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
To: uri@bunyip.com
From: e-krol@uiuc.edu (Ed Krol)
Subject: Suggest meaning for URN
After reading alot of comments about what should be encoded in
URN's and bickering about metainformation, character sets...
I think I have and easy way to view them.
Are they not just a string which is a permanent symbolic reference
to a resource. Period.
Treated as such, many of the issues surronding what the string of
the URN looks like is superfluous. If the creator of the URN can pick
the symbol, then it doesn't matter if its meaningful to everyone or
no one. Software doing a lookup shouldn't care its just a string so
that works. If some countries decide to code their URN's in ascii
that works (and might be recognizable to some folks). Other countries
might decide to code them in other languages and that works too.
They might be recogizeable to some in that language but not in others.
Is this making it too simple?