Re: application/xml in ietf-xml-guidelines

On Wed, 2002-04-17 at 16:59, Keith Moore wrote:
> What I have a really hard time understanding is the belief that everything 
> should run over HTTP, or that everything should be named using HTTP URLs, 
> when it's abundantly clear that HTTP and HTTP URIs are a poor choice for 
> many applications - even if HTTP is only used as a mechanism to negotiate 
> another protocol.  

I have no fondness for HTTP identifiers.  At the same time, I have no
fondness for opaque identifiers, especially when used to identify
vocabularies.

If the IETF plans to provide some mechanism whereby developers can look
at a namespace URN used in a protocol and find information about it -
preferably something more substantial than a Google search on
RFC+urn:ietf... - I have no objection whatsoever.

I'd love it if the W3C and the IETF could get their act together on
making URIs in general less opaque, but the W3C doesn't seem to get that
and the IETF doesn't presently seem interested in building the
infrastructure it takes to look behind its own URNs.

As the Internet-Draft for IANA URN Namespace states "The namespace is
primarily opaque", I have a very hard time imagining this situation
changing any time soon.
 
-- 
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com