Proposal for XRI Syntax 2.1 to treat all delimiters as signficant

["Drummond Reed" <drummond.reed@cordance.net>]

On the TC telecon last Thursday, I received the following action item:

# DRUMMOND to send an email to the list summarizing a proposal that in XRI
Syntax 2.1 all delimiters and parentheses be considered syntactically
significant.

The following examples were discussed on the telecon and are now listed on
the http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XriCd02/GlobalRefs page.

#1A $(http://example.com)=gmb
#1B $(http://example.com)*(=gmb)
#1C $(http://example.com)!(=gmb)

#2A $(http://example.com)=gmb*sub1
#2B $(http://example.com)*(=gmb*sub1)
#2C $(http://example.com)!(=gmb*sub1)

#3A $(http://example.com)*(=gmb)*sub1
#3B $(http://example.com)*(=gmb)!sub1

#4A $(http://example.com)*((=gmb))
#4B $(http://example.com)*(((=gmb)))

The essence of the proposal is that while it is very clear that many XRI
authorities MAY assign XRIs #1A/B/C to the same resource, or #2A/B/C to the
same resource, or #3A/B to the same resource, or #4A/B to the same resource,
it is also clear that SOME XRI authorities MAY NOT consider these equivalent
due to the additional metadata they contain.

In other words, while SOME XRI authorites MAY declare these XRIs synonymous
by local policy in their own namespaces, other XRI authorities may declare
them as non-synonymous in their namespaces.

In order to preserve the right of the latter set of XRI authorities to treat
these XRIs as non-synonymous, the XRI Syntax 2.1 specification MUST treat
all delimiters as significant. Therefore synonymity between XRIs that differ
only in the delimiters used may only be established via local policy or
resolution.

=Drummond