Requirements: Explicit non-resolvable XRI syntax

["Drummond Reed" <drummond.reed@onename.com>]

This is a new thread to respond to Gabe's points about the new
"Non-resolvable syntax" requirement - 3.4.5 in the v5 Requirements doc.
Gabe said:

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Wachob, Gabe [mailto:gwachob@visa.com]
>Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2003 12:25 PM
>To: Drummond Reed; xri@lists.oasis-open.org
>Subject: RE: [xri] Groups - xri-requirements-1.0-draft-05b.doc uploaded
>
>Drummond-
>
>        First, in section 3.4.5 (you said 3.3.5) - "non-resolvable
syntax" - whats the use case? Why do we need
>to *prevent* an attempt to resolve? Why would a software component
resolve an identifier unless it needed
>to? It seems like there are only two cases: a piece of software needs
to resolve the identifier, or it doesn't.
>This decision is based on >application semantics, not the syntax of the
identifier. How does marking an
>identifier as "non-resolvable" help at all?

To my knowledge, the modal use case for an explicit non-resolvable
identifier (i.e., one which the syntax itself marks the XRI as
non-resolvable) is where the identifier is only used as a
cross-reference.

To use the David Booth example,  "(+love)". If I knew I was only using
this identifier to refer to the concept of love as a cross-reference,
i.e.: xri://foo.com/documents/(+love) and xri://bar.com/mydocs/(+love),
and that therefore there was no point in trying to resolve "+love", then
it would be helpful to be able to indicate that (probably using
something like the comment syntax we have discussed earlier).

Note that because this requirement is really only relevant to
cross-references, I suggest that if it stays we move in to that section
for the v6 gold document.

=Drummond