Re: [xri] Moving from "xri://" to "xri:"

[Victor Grey <victor@idcommons.org>]

+1
=vg


Drummond Reed wrote:
> XRI TC Members and Observers:
>
> In discussion among the XRI Syntax 2.1 editors late last week, the  
> question arose as to whether we needed to keep the “//” after  
> “xri:” so that an XRI would be considered to have an RFC 3986/3987- 
> compliant authority component. That was the motivation that “//”  
> was added in XRI 2.0 syntax -- XRI 1.0 syntax used only “xri:”  
> followed by the XRI authority component.
>
> We realized that many of the reasons we desired compatability with  
> RFC 3986/3987-compliant authority syntax, such as the ability to  
> process IP addresses or DNS names in their URI/IRI syntax form,  
> have changed in XRI 2.1. For example, the XRI $ Dictionary entries  
> $ip and $dns will now be used to express IP addresses and DNS  
> names. Also, XRI-normal form will now explicitly not use the scheme  
> name, which is only added in IRI-normal form (see http://wiki.oasis- 
> open.org/xri/XriCd02/FormsAndTransformations).
>
> We also realized that having the XRI scheme use the URI/IRI “path- 
> rootless” rule instead of the previous “authority path-abemtpy”  
> rule would still give us URI-reference normalization, comparison  
> rules, etc. But we would gain the following advantages:
>
> 1) An XRI “authority” will not be mistaken by a URI/IRI parser for  
> a URI/IRI “host” (which it sometimes matched and sometimes did not).
>
> 2) Since "@" is explicitly allowed as a character in a URI/IRI  
> path, we don't have to worry about escaping it when it is not the  
> first character in the authority (as we would otherwise have had to  
> do to conform with the URI/IRI “host” subrule of the “authority”  
> rule).
>
> 3) We no longer need to specify/support the URI/IRI “port” rule,  
> which has never really applied to XRI.
>
> 4) We can refer to the first segment in an absolute XRI as the  
> "authority segment" because it is technically part of the path.
>
> 5) It makes it even clearer that XRI is designed to support  
> multiple types of roots, including p2p roots, and XRI roots are  
> rooted on GCS chars instead of "//".
>
> We have thus updated the proposed XRI 2.1 ABNF listed at:
>
>       http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XriCd02/XriAbnf2dot1
>
> Note that all proposed revisions are logged on this page so you can  
> see the entire progression of the editor’s thinking from the start  
> of the ABNF revision process. Please send any questions or feedback  
> regarding this proposed change – or any other change – to the list,  
> as we would like to produce Working Draft 01 of XRI Syntax 2.1  
> prior to our f2f meeting week after next.
>
> Thank you,
>
> =Drummond
>
>