To: uri@bunyip.com
In-Reply-To: Alan@lcs.mit.edu's message of Sat, 9 Oct 1993 10:13:25 -0700 <93Oct9.101342pdt.2795@golden.parc.xerox.com>
Subject: Re: The URN: wrapper and URLs...
From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
Message-Id: <93Oct9.104114pdt.2794@golden.parc.xerox.com>
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1993 10:41:13 PDT
Consider that current URLs of the form news:article really function as
resource names: they don't really identify where or how to locate the
article, but just it's identity. It doesn't seem like it's worth it to
make a major effort to distinguish between names and locators, in the
sense that if a client gets one it doesn't know how to deal with, it
should just go to some other agent to help it resolve it.
I'd argue that URNs should be of the form
naming-authority-type: // naming-authority / identifier
assuming that we'll have more than one kind of naming authority / name
space.