[urn] Re: Request for registration of formal URN namespace "dnp"

Dale,

Thank you for the review, and for the kind words.

You are right, and I accept the change. As drafted, the grammar
restricted "class" to lower-case letters while the URN-equivalence rule
declared the whole NSS case-insensitive and offered an all-upper-case
name as an example of an equivalent form. On the strict reading, the
third example was not a well-formed name at all, so the equivalence
rule was ranging over a string the grammar rejected.

Adopting your production:

   class       = 2*24( ALPHA )

and removing the now-unused "lowalpha" production. The intent was that
the grammar define well-formedness while assignment practice, which is
narrower, keep everything in lower case. Encoding the narrower practice
in the grammar was the error. Resolving it in favour of the equivalence
rule changes neither which names are URN-equivalent to which, nor PDA's
practice of assigning in lower case, which the canonicality statement
still records.

I have also added a sentence to the Syntax field making the distinction
explicit, so the same question is not raised against a later revision:

   The grammar above defines the set of well-formed names. It is wider
   than the set of names PDA assigns: the assignment practice for
   local-id and the canonical form given under URN-equivalence below
   are narrower, and a name presented in a form the grammar admits but
   PDA would not have assigned is still well-formed and still
   URN-equivalent to the assigned name.

Both changes will appear in draft-sohail-urn-dnp-01, together with any
further comments the list has over the next few days. I will post a
revised registration template alongside it, clearly marked as
superseding the one sent on 5 August, so there is no ambiguity about
which text is being put to IANA.

Regards,
Hira Sohail
Director of Partnerships & Stakeholder Engagement

[cid:b364b46c-ef91-491b-b49d-42f7b10bb827]

Phone

+92 302 516 1211

Email

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________________________________
From: Dale R. Worley <[email protected]>
Sent: 06 August 2026 06:54
To: Director - Stakeholder Engagement <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [urn] Request for registration of formal URN namespace "dnp"

Director - Stakeholder Engagement <[email protected]> writes:
> URN NAMESPACE REGISTRATION TEMPLATE
> Formal Namespace Identifier: dnp
> Submitted under Section 6.2 of RFC 8141 (Expert Review)

This is easily the best registration template I've seen.

I heartily approve of it, although I suggest one minor change.  The
syntax is given as:

>      NSS         = class ":" local-id [ ":" edition ]
>
>      class       = 2*24( lowalpha )
>
>      local-id    = id-start *62( id-char ) id-end
>      id-start    = ALPHA / DIGIT
>      id-char     = ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "."
>      id-end      = ALPHA / DIGIT
>
>      edition     = ver-form / date-form
>      ver-form    = "v" 1*3DIGIT [ "." 1*3DIGIT ]
>      date-form   = 4DIGIT "-" 2DIGIT "-" 2DIGIT
>
>      lowalpha    = %x61-7A     ; a-z

Taken literally, this means that the "class" must be composed of
lower-case letters.  But the section on equivalence says that lower case
and upper case are equivalent:

>    URN-equivalence. Two names are URN-equivalent if they are
>    URN-equivalent under Section 3.1 of RFC 8141 after additionally
>    applying ASCII case folding to the entire NSS. That is, the NSS
>    in this namespace is case-insensitive, so that
>
>      urn:dnp:standard:dnp-d.002:v1
>      urn:dnp:standard:DNP-D.002:v1
>      URN:DNP:STANDARD:DNP-D.002:V1

Taking the syntax description strictly, the "class" must be lower-case
(although the local-id may be mixed case), which means that the third
example is not a valid DNP URN.

I recommend replacing the "class" production with

>      class       = 2*24( ALPHA )

and eliminating the "lowalpha" production.

Dale
Thanks
Best Regards,
Director - Stakeholder Engagement
________________________________
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