Re: UrisAreTheWay -- [Handle-globus] Airplane rambings: URIs, handle owners, naming conventions map to policy...

["Sam X. Sun" <ssun@cnri.reston.va.us>]

> UrisAreTheWay
>
> We need a consistent way to name things, to map other naming schemes
> into, and we need a conventions that translate to common semantics.
>
> The proposal is to use URIs as much as possible. It has a well defined
> naming scheme with simple rules for comparison. Furthermore, it maps
> relatively well to the use of XML.
>
> Note that a handle can also be represented as URI, by using a schema
> prefix of "hdl:", plus some other formatting rules to ensure that the
> proper URI format is used
> (??? - the URI naming seems somewhat more strict than the handle scheme
> - what are the precise limitation? what is the mapping for handle=>hdl:
> ??? )

The difference can be generalized in two aspects:

1) character set - Because URIs MUST be transcribable, URI does not allow 
any non-printable or blank characters in it. Officially, it doesn't allow 
non-ASCII characters neither. These forbidden characters need to be 
escape-encoded to be expressed within an URI. Handle names doesn't have to 
transcribable. It can contain any Unicode characters, encoded it UTF-8.

2) There is some subtle different between URI and handle syntax:

   The syntax for URI is defined in terms of :

        <URI:scheme> [://] <scheme-specific-portion> [ ? <uri-query>  [ # 
<uri-fragment> ] ]

   While handle syntax is defined as:

       <handle-prefix> / <handle-suffic>

In summary, URIs can be mapped into a sub-namespace in handle namespace, but 
not wise-versa.



_______________________________________________
Handle-globus mailing list
Handle-globus@cnri.reston.va.us
http://www.cnri.reston.va.us/mailman/listinfo/handle-globus