Re: [xdi] Recommended syntaxes for user ids within an organization?

[Joseph Boyle <planetwork@josephboyle.net>]

Which syntax are we defining to be the successor / migration path of the old “community i-names” sub-names of format @org*user as mentioned in http://www.inames.net/business.html ?

On Aug 5, 2014, at 12:20 AM, =Drummond Reed <drummond.reed@xdi.org> wrote:

I'll go further than Markus: the semantics of XDI context symbols have been well established for several years now. These contexts are uniform everywhere. = is the context symbol for an individual authority at any level of context. + is the context for a legal authority other than a person at any level of context. (The same goes for #, $, *, and @).

So =markus and +nym=markus represent the same person in two different contexts -- the first in his own individual context and the second in the context of the legal authority +nym. To say anything else would destroy the consistency of XDI semantics which we have spent 10 years building.

So the only way to create a relative identifier for a person is to use cross-reference syntax, i.e., =(markus). Any XDI authority at any level may use a relative cross-reference in any context. However it is strongly discouraged to use a cross-reference at the top level because by definition the semantics of a relative cross-reference are highly likely to conflict across XDI graphs. So the only way to safely use a relative cross-reference is within another absolute context. Thus +nym=(markus) is fine, because +nym establishes a fully qualified context for the resolution of the relative identifier =(markus).

=Drummond 

On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 8:38 AM, Markus Sabadello <markus.sabadello@xdi.org> wrote:

I disagree with using any other character than + and = for this purpose.

A syntax like +nym*markus, +nym#markus etc. is very confusing and feels like a step backward into XRI 2.0.

So to me, the only question is, should it be +nym=markus, or should it be +nym=(markus). I can see arguments for both cases.

1. I understand Drummond's preference for +nym=(markus) to emphasize the "locality" of the identifier. We have also been using the parentheses syntax to e.g. identify an "e-mail address within Facebook" rather than just an "e-mail address".

2. At the same time, +nym=(markus) is of course not user friendly. So from this perspective +nym=markus would clearly be preferable.

Yes let's discuss on the next TC call.

Markus

On Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 10:49 PM, Joseph Boyle <planetwork@josephboyle.net> wrote:

Jim Fournier asks about a topic which I’d like to put on the agenda for this week’s TC meeting to give recommendations if possible.

If an organization wants to give usernames to its users, what are the possibilities for naming conventions that are short, simple, and not confusable with existing online conventions, e.g. # is usually a hashtag for a topic not a person?

Some examples to start - which of the following are recommended, not recommended, or illegal?

+org*user
+org#user
+org!user
+[org]!user
+<org>.user
+org=user

Note the characters - _ . are legal as part of identifiers, so that +org-user +org_user +org.user would all be parsed as single names of organizations separate from +org and not covered by +org.
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