Hi Jakob,
Here are my two cents to your questions:
URN is generally considered a subset of URI and its syntax very much follows
the URI syntax, as described in RFC1630. According to RFC1630, both '/' and
'.' character are reserved for delimiting of substrings whose relationsip is
hierarchical. The DOI-URN syntax you mentioned confirms to such practice. I
don't see any problem with the way it uses '/' or '.' in its scheme
definition.
We also have some other applications that refers handles as URI/URL
directly, under the "hdl:" URI scheme. But it's still unclear if we shall
register the "hdl:" URI scheme, the "urn:hdl:" URN scheme, or both.
Eventually, I think it's the application that will determine which way to
go. Note that handle systems provides a name service that doesn't rely on
the use of URI, URN, or URL. It provides an infrastructural service just
like DNS, which operates independently from any web-application.
Hope this helps.
All the best,
Sam
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jakob Voss" <jakob.voss@gbv.de>
To: <handle-info@cnri.reston.va.us>
Cc: "Konstantin Rekk" <konstantin.rekk@gbv.de>
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2006 7:59 AM
Subject: [Handle-info] Handle identifier and URN - what about the slash?
> Hi!
>
> We think about using handle but we also need to create URNs so we must
> conform to RFC 2141 [1]. In RFC 2141 URN syntax is defined as
>
> <URN> ::= "urn:" <NID> ":" <NSS>
>
> <NSS> ::= 1*<URN chars>
>
> <URN chars> ::= <trans> | "%" <hex> <hex>
>
> <trans> ::= <upper> | <lower> | <number> | <other> | <reserved>
>
> <reserved> ::= '%" | "/" | "?" | "#"
>
> But it is also stated that reserved characters should not be used:
>
>> 2.3.2 The other reserved characters
>>
>> RFC 1630 reserves the characters "/", "?", and "#" for particular
>> purposes. The URN-WG has not yet debated the applicability and
>> precise semantics of those purposes as applied to URNs. Therefore,
>> these characters are RESERVED for future developments. Namespace
>> developers SHOULD NOT use these characters in unencoded form, but
>> rather use the appropriate %-encoding for each character.
>
> However handle (RFC 3650 [2]) uses the slash ('/') to seperate Handle
> Naming Authority and Handle Local Name:
>
> <Handle> ::= <Handle Naming Authority> "/" <Handle Local Name>
>
> For instance DOI as an application of Handle includes a slash in its
> identifier but there is also an URN representation of DOI, although it
> does not seem to be official [3], but known for years [4]. The syntax is
>
> <DOI-URN> ::= "urn:" "doi:" <Handle Naming Authority> "/" <Handle Local
> Name>
>
>
> My questions:
> 1) Is it a problem to use such handle-based URNs with slash in it?
> 2) Do you know of other uses of handle beside DOI that also use URN?
>
> Greetings,
> Jakob
>
> References:
> [1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2141.txt
> [2] http://www.handle.net/rfc/rfc3650.html
> [3] http://www.doi.org/factsheets/DOIIdentifierSpecs.html
> [4] http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may99/05paskin.html
>
>
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