CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_

Reported by Jim Fullton/MCNC - CNIDR

Minutes of the Uniform Resource Identifiers Working Group (URI)


Session I

The meeting began with introductions, followed by Tim Berners-Lee's
presentation of the current URL draft.  After discussion, the following
changes were proposed:


  o Remove the AFS type.

  o Add the ``mailto'' type, mailto:[email protected], designed to be a
    generalized mail transmission URL, and to help solve the problem of
    how to contact an author.

  o Wrapping---the formal URL wrapper is defined as <>.


A significant portion of the first session was spent discussing the
merits of creating a more generalized URL specification, with the
current specification as a specific case.  Peter Deutsch advocates the
creation of this far more generalized specification and will examine the
issue further before the next IETF. During these discussions, it became
clear that the allowable character set needed refining.

The three general proposals were:


 1. No restrictions on character sets.
 2. Significant restrictions on the character set; i.e.  the current
    document.
 3. Looser restrictions on the character set, but stay with the current
    proposal.


Further discussion of URL issues was put off until the third session.
Chris Weider closed out the first session with a tutorial on current URN
issues.


Session II

The second session was spent on URN issues.  Karen Sollins made a
presentation describing a system under development at MIT.

After further discussion of URNs, the group agreed that several issues

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needed to be resolved before URNs could be properly specified:


  o Detection of duplicates
  o Fragment specifiers
  o Version specifiers
  o Type specifiers


After vast amounts of discussion, fragment, version, and typing
information was moved to a Uniform Resource Citation object, which has
not received a formal name.  The URN was defined as a URN identifier
(RURNS), a naming authority string and an opaque string defined by the
naming authority as being unique within its name space.  The whole URN
is wrapped in <>, just like a URL:


                           <URN:NA:OpStr>


A URN should occupy the same character space as a URL, for ease of
applications upgrades.



Session III


The discussion of URLs was continued in the third session.  Mitra led a
discussion about modifications to the URL character set, and the group
agreed to modify the URL draft to allow the use of the following
characters:


                                  :
                                  ;
                                  =
                                  '
                                 ''


Other characters not included in the draft are excluded.

A vote on the modified draft was held, with the group recommending
adoption of the modified draft by a vote of twenty-nine to one.

The URN format as described in the second session was informally agreed
upon, which led into a discussion of naming authorities.  It is assumed
that many naming authorities will exist, including authorities within an
organization whose existence will not be known outside the organization.

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Next Time

At the next IETF, an agenda item will be specified for a ``sub-ID''
discussion to define the format of the naming authority string and
opaque string.


Attendees

Matti Aarnio             [email protected]
Chris Adie               [email protected]
Harald Alvestrand        [email protected]
Tim Berners-Lee          [email protected]
Zavisa Bjelogrlic        [email protected]
Jodi-Ann Chu             [email protected]
James Conklin            [email protected]
Glen Daniels             [email protected]
Peter Deutsch            [email protected]
Alan Emtage              [email protected]
Urs Eppenberger          [email protected]
Jill Foster              [email protected]
Jim Fullton              [email protected]
Kevin Gamiel             [email protected]
Ben Geerlings            [email protected]
Anders Gillner           [email protected]
Judith Grass             [email protected]
Maria Heijne             [email protected]
Marco Hernandez          [email protected]
Rune Hjelsvold           [email protected]
Nandor Horvath           [email protected]
Per Jacobsen             [email protected]
Xander Jansen            [email protected]
Olle Jarnefors           [email protected]
Borka Jerman-Blazic      [email protected]
Brewster Kahle           [email protected]
Michael Khalandovsky     [email protected]
Lothar Klein             [email protected]
Jim Knowles              [email protected]
Peter Koch               [email protected]
John Kunze               [email protected]
Pekka Kytolaakso         [email protected]
Thomas Lenggenhager      [email protected]
Steen Linden             [email protected]
John Lindsay             [email protected]
Anne Lord                [email protected]
April Marine             [email protected]
Chip Matthes             [email protected]
Brian May                [email protected]
Mitra                    [email protected]
Keith Moore              [email protected]
Mark Needleman           [email protected]
Clifford Neuman          [email protected]

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Lisa Nielsen             [email protected]
Lars-Gunnar Olsson       [email protected]
Jorg Ott                 [email protected]
Jim Rees                 [email protected]
Ulla Sandberg            [email protected]
Rickard Schoultz         [email protected]
David Sitman             a79vm.tau.ac.il
Karen Sollins            [email protected]
Milan Sova               [email protected]
Simon Spero              [email protected]
Arend van den Boogaart   [email protected]
Marc van der Noordaa     [email protected]
Guido van Rossum         [email protected]
Ton Verschuren           [email protected]
Chris Weider             [email protected]



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