To: bajan@bunyip.com
In-Reply-To: bajan@bunyip.com's message of Tue, 25 Jan 1994 18:54:46 -0800 <94Jan25.185500pst.2794@golden.parc.xerox.com>
Subject: Re: Action Items
From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
Message-Id: <94Jan25.222023pst.2735@golden.parc.xerox.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 1994 22:20:23 PST
The document that Karen Sollins and I put together is not a functional
specification for URNs, but rather a requirements document. That is,
we did not lay out how URNs function, but merely some constraints on
their function and structure.
Karen and I met last Friday. There were a number of questions that
were raised in the discussion in Houston, and we raised in the
document, and then, independently, on the list. In lieu of any
response on those issues, we came to some tentative agreements on some
of them, and will be circulating a revised document soon. (Feel free
to comment on the issues circulated earlier, in any case.)
I believe that it would be reasonable to create a single document
which outlined both the requirements for URNs and for URLs. This would
assure us of a consistent style, and allow some coherence when the
requirements overlapped (e.g., for transportability in various
transport mechanisms.)
There are a design issues for URLs that have not yet been resolved:
For example, for FTP urls, the ambiguity of the role of "/" in FTP
URLs, and the desire to include a TYPE BINARY or TYPE ASCII
specification. There WAS a proposal to resolve this issue (Kieth
Moore, I believe, sent it out), but, other than some groaning, there
were no counter-proposals.