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Subject: RE: [xri] Grammatical rules for cross-reference usage
All, Just got back online -- was all day Saturday at a school event and today at Mother's Day activities (given that I'll be gone at IIW all week). In answer to Marty's question, yes, sticky stars went out the door with the Draft 14 syntax (actually the Draft 13 syntax -- Draft 14 eliminated the typeless subsegment in XRI authority segment based on the consensus we reached on that issue a week ago.) I look forward to discussing more at IIW. =Drummond -----Original Message----- From: Schleiff, Marty [mailto:marty.schleiff@boeing.com] Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2007 1:36 PM To: Schleiff, Marty; Drummond Reed; william.tan@neustar.biz; Les Chasen; xri@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: [xri] Grammatical rules for cross-reference usage Hi All, I may have to apologize about one of my prior messages (below). I may have missed something regarding draft 14 syntax. Prior to 5/2/07 the notion of "sticky stars" (and sticky bangs) was the prevailing thought about the scope of a global-xref (i.e., subsegments beginning with star or bang are "sticky" to the global-xref -- the global-xref continues until the next GCS, or slash, or end of the XRI authority portion). See messages with the subject "Difference between global and local subsegments ..."). On 5/2/07 a new thread with the subject "[XRI] Potential Breakthrough" started, in which I think Drummond abandoned the idea of sticky stars. My response (below) was based on my belief that draft 14 syntax still has sticky stars. However, if sticky stars are NOT part of draft 14 syntax, then Drummond's examples 2A, 2B, and 2C do indeed have the same respective meanings as 1A,1B, and 1C. Without sticky stars, I think Drummond and I have a much diminished dogfight. But there are still differences to be discussed. I'm going to resist additional comments on this thread until Drummond can confirm if sticky stars is, or is not, part of draft 14 syntax. Marty.Schleiff@boeing.com; CISSP Associate Technical Fellow - Cyber Identity Specialist Computing Security Infrastructure (206) 679-5933 -----Original Message----- From: Schleiff, Marty Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 9:15 PM To: Drummond Reed; william.tan@neustar.biz; Les Chasen; xri@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: [xri] Grammatical rules for cross-reference usage Witness two very tenacious bulldogs grappling for the same bone:-) In answer to Drummond's question about examples 1A and 2A, even though they look similar, they do not mean the same thing. 1A "@aaa*@bbb*ccc*ddd" (using Marty's preferred syntax) means that "ddd" is in the context of "@aaa*@bbb*ccc", and that "ccc" is in the context of "@aaa*@bbb", and that "@bbb" is in the context of "@aaa". There is no implication at all that the XRI "@bbb*ccc" even exists. There is no implication at all that "@bbb*ccc*ddd" even exists. "ccc" exists only in the context of "@aaa*@bbb", and "ddd" exists only in the context of "@aaa*@bbb*ccc". 2A "@aaa@bbb*ccc*ddd" (using draft 14 syntax) means that "@bbb*ccc*ddd" is in the context of "@aaa". This implies that "@bbb" has actually named "ccc", and that "@bbb*ccc*ddd" is a real XRI. "@aaa" is not allowed to bastardize the "@bbb" namespace by sticking it's own local sub segs after the "@bbb" global reference. 1B actually comes closer to matching the meaning of 2A. Also, there's no obvious difference in the meaning between 2A and 2B, so 1A also matches the meaning of 2B. In Marty's preferred syntax there's only one concise way to express 1A, 1B, and 1C. In draft 14 syntax, 2A and 2B mean the same thing (even though they parse differently). For draft 14 syntax Drummond suggests that 2A would be a preferred form over 2B, suggesting that the guideline is if you don't need parentheses, then don't use them. However, if I were responsible for the "@aaa" namespace, and I needed to pull @bbb's identifiers into the "@aaa" context, I'd lean toward using parentheses because I have no control over identifiers under the "@bbb" namespace. That way, if "@bbb" decides to begin using "/" in their identifiers, or IRIs as identifiers, or cross references in their identifiers, or global references in their identifiers, I could still use the same form (i.e., with parentheses) to bring those identifiers into the "@aaa" context. Regarding the coincidence that 1A, 1B, and 1C are all legal under draft 14 syntax is not by design; it's purely coincidence. They don't mean the same thing under draft 14 syntax as they do in Marty's preferred syntax -- sorta like "=steve@microsoft.com" is syntactically a valid email address, but of course it means something different as an email address than it does as an XRI. Marty's preferred syntax is not the same as draft 14 syntax. It strives to have just a single way to express a concept, and may require normalization IF there are cases with multiple ways to express the same concept. Knowing Drummond, and knowing me, I'm guessing our dogfight will last until other TC members pull us apart, or spray us with the hose. I think we'll both respect the wishes of the TC. Marty.Schleiff@boeing.com; CISSP Associate Technical Fellow - Cyber Identity Specialist Computing Security Infrastructure (206) 679-5933 -----Original Message----- From: Drummond Reed [mailto:drummond.reed@cordance.net] Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 5:30 PM To: Schleiff, Marty; william.tan@neustar.biz; 'Les Chasen'; xri@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: [xri] Grammatical rules for cross-reference usage Marty, I emphatically agree with you that "the conciseness of math is the type of conciseness we should aim for". My point is only that we are aiming for that conciseness for purposes of resource identification, which is what happens in human language, not for operations on those resources, which is what happens in math. I also agree with you that parentheses provide that conciseness in math -- AND in English. I can be very precise about which words I do (and do not) put in parentheses ;-) And while I'm agreeing with you, let's end the week on another interesting note: the only difference between the Draft 14 syntax and what you proposed for the three identifiers below is a single character: the * before the @ in the first one. 1A: @aaa*@bbb*ccc*ddd 1B: @aaa*(@bbb*ccc*ddd) 1C: @aaa*(@bbb*ccc)*ddd To be precise, under the Draft 14 syntax, all three of the above are fully legal XRIs. However there is only one that could be expressed more concisely: 2A: @aaa@bbb*ccc*ddd 2B: @aaa*(@bbb*ccc*ddd) 2C: @aaa*(@bbb*ccc)*ddd From everything you and I have talked about, I don't believe there's any difference in interpretation between 1A and 2A, i.e., they have the same "meaning". Am I wrong? =Drummond (going offline to a school event now -- back sometime Sunday, then off to Internet Identity Workshop) -----Original Message----- From: Schleiff, Marty [mailto:marty.schleiff@boeing.com] Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 12:55 PM To: Drummond Reed; william.tan@neustar.biz; Les Chasen; xri@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: [xri] Grammatical rules for cross-reference usage I think the conciseness of the math is the type of conciseness we should aim for. The mathmatical use of parenthesis to signify a different precedence of operators than would be followed without the parentheses fits pretty closely with XRI's need to express a different precedence of delimited segments. Such conciseness helps us understand the difference between the following XRIs expressed in Marty's preferred syntax: @aaa*@bbb*ccc*ddd @aaa*(@bbb*ccc*ddd) @aaa*(@bbb*ccc)*ddd Marty.Schleiff@boeing.com; CISSP Associate Technical Fellow - Cyber Identity Specialist Computing Security Infrastructure (206) 679-5933 -----Original Message----- From: Drummond Reed [mailto:drummond.reed@cordance.net] Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 12:24 PM To: william.tan@neustar.biz; 'Les Chasen'; Schleiff, Marty; xri@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: [xri] Grammatical rules for cross-reference usage Wil, First you asked, "Why should one be forced to refer to the xref using a "quoted" paradigm just because it is crossing three contexts?" My answer is based directly on the precedent in English (Marty does not agree with me that human language is the model we should be following here, but I feel very strongly it is human language and not mathematics we are modelling here). In other words, this is exactly what you need to do in English when you need to put a word in quotes or parentheses. For example: I went to Paris. I went to "Paris". I went to Paris (the one in Texas). In the second sentence, the writer needed to express "Paris" in quotes to indicate the writer meant a different context than the normal global context. In the third one, the writer needed to put "(the one in Texas)" in parentheses in order to indicate that this phrase as a whole modified the word "Paris". This is *precisely* the same rule defined on http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XriCd02/DirectConcatenation. You need to use parentheses when you need to cross contexts that are not otherwise clearly delineated by the six XRI context symbols. Otherwise you don't. Second, you said, "Also, the fact that crossing two contexts is a more common use case than crossing three seems to me that we are just using it as a shorthand and should consider normalization." I don't see how that follows. You can't "normalize" any of the three English sentences above (i.e., take out the quotes or parens) without losing the meaning. The point I was trying to make is that direct concatenation will the 95% case in XRI usage just as it is in English -- we compose sentences by directly concatenating words using spaces as the "subsegment delimiters" and periods as the "segment delimiters". Putting subsegments or segments in parentheses is the 5% exception just like it is with putting English words/sentences in quotes or parentheses. So let's keep the simple case simple -- direct concatenation -- while still enabling the complex case -- parenthetical encapsulation -- when you really need it (for which the killer use case has IMHO always been encapsulating URIs). =Drummond -----Original Message----- From: Tan, William [mailto:william.tan@neustar.biz] Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 2:26 AM To: Drummond Reed; Les Chasen; Marty Schleiff; xri@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [xri] Grammatical rules for cross-reference usage Crossing two or three contexts doesn't seem very different conceptually. Why should one be forced to refer to the xref using a "quoted" paradigm just because it is crossing three contexts? Also, the fact that crossing two contexts is a more common use case than crossing three seems to me that we are just using it as a shorthand and should consider normalization. -- http://xri.net/=wil -----Original Message----- From: "Drummond Reed" <drummond.reed@cordance.net> Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 23:37:24 To:"Chasen, Les" <les.chasen@neustar.biz>,"Schleiff, Marty" <marty.schleiff@boeing.com>,<xri@lists.oasis-open.org> Subject: RE: [xri] Grammatical rules for cross-reference usage Les, I know you have been saying, "if there is a grammatical difference then it should mean that we do something different in the only client we define, resolution". After some reflection, I no longer believe that's true. Here's my logic: the XRIs *example and !example are absolutely identical from the standpoint of resolution. However "grammatically" they have very different meanings - one is used for a reassignable identifier and one is use for a persistent identifier. That's very important to XRI authors and XRI consumers, but not to the resolution infrastructure. Therefore, the test I think we should be applying is the one Marty has been asking for: "If there is a grammatical difference, XRI authors should know when to use which type of cross-reference - direct or parenthetical." I believe the answer posted today on http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XriCd02/DirectConcatenation is crystal clear: use a direct cross-reference when you are only crossing two contexts, and use a parenthetical cross-reference when you must cross three contexts. The first will be very common, the second will be rare - as rare as putting English words in "quotes" or (parentheticals). The fact that we started with the rare case before we discovered the common case is, IMHO, what has caused our deliberations to take so long. It's not without precedent - 2.5 years ago the TC struggled for several months over switching from dots and semicolons to stars and bangs as subsegment delimiters. Today we take it for granted that you can use dots in a i-name. I know I sound like a broken record, but I believe the same will be true for direct concatenation. I agree with you that it's great to finally be getting input from others on the TC who have not been as close to the discussion. I also look forward to the feedback from non-TC members that we'll be getting at the XRI sessions we'll be holding at IIW next week. I too can hardly wait for us to close and get XRI Syntax 2.1 in production. I'm going to be concentrating hard tomorrow and Sunday on posting the first editor's draft of XRI Resolution 2.0 Working Draft 11 so we can finally get that into production. =Drummond ---------------- From: Chasen, Les [mailto:les.chasen@neustar.biz] Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 7:48 PM To: Schleiff, Marty; Drummond Reed; xri@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: [xri] Grammatical rules for cross-reference usage I am not getting the grammatical difference either. We have discussed many different grammars over the past few weeks. There was the difference between a word in quotes and not in quotes, there was talking about "THE" or "A" entity in the xref, there was some discussion of direct concatenation meta data being factual real data about the entity in the xref and in the local context being the parents opinionated view on the xref, and now possession for direct concatenation and I'm not sure I understand the parenthetical option. I have been saying for a long time that IMHO if there is a grammatical difference then it should mean that we do something different in the only client we define, resolution. If there is no significant difference and therefore no difference in behavior then we are back to equivalence. We have also discussed a potential middle ground of allowing direct concatenation of the two GCS characters that are currently not resolvable, + and $. The editors have been debating this issue for some time. I think we have posted a lot of good info to this list about the issues. I would like to strongly encourage the other members of this list to please speak up. I understand the wish to have a simpler syntax one that is more intuitive to end users. I am all for it but it doesn't come about by magic. To me it is up to the community on how we proceed. contact: <http://xri.net/=les> =les sip <http://xri.net/=les/(+phone)> : =les/(+phone) chat: <http://xri.net/=les/skype/chat> =les/skype/chat ---------------- From: Schleiff, Marty [mailto:marty.schleiff@boeing.com] Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 9:36 PM To: Drummond Reed; xri@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: [xri] Grammatical rules for cross-reference usage Hi Drummond (& All), I'm somewhat relieved that in both cases (without parens and with parens) the referenced global XRI is an identifier for the target resource that can be used independently of the parent context. So, "@bbb" ALWAYS means the same named resource, whether it stands alone, or is in an xref with parens like "@aaa+(@bbb)", or is referenced in direct concatenation like "@aaa@bbb". I think the grammatical implications of each (without parents and with parens) are insufficiently described. You've described a syntactic difference that has no meaningful explanation. Why would someone care to cross two contexts as opposed to crossing three contexts? You are still searching for meaningful grammer to assign to the syntax, instead of designing syntax to support meaningful grammar. This is backwards, akin to deriving the abstract syntax from the concrete syntax. Marty.Schleiff@boeing.com; CISSP Associate Technical Fellow - Cyber Identity Specialist Computing Security Infrastructure (206) 679-5933 ---------------- From: Drummond Reed [mailto:drummond.reed@cordance.net] Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 5:20 PM To: xri@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: [xri] Grammatical rules for cross-reference usage As promised, I just posted an update to the Direct Concatenation wiki page with the "grammatical rules" for cross-reference usage. See section 4 of: http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XriCd02/DirectConcatenation: <http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XriCd02/DirectConcatenation> I believe - and I know I'm going way out on a limb here - that they will satisfy *both* Marty and Les. The reason is that they address Marty's concern that the rules proposed last week were counterintuitive because they required a parenthetical cross-reference to NOT represent a globally-identified resource, and also Les's concern that the difference between direct concatenation and parenthetical encapsulation must be clean and clear. And the very best part? They are simple and straightforward with no funky exceptions. Feedback gladly solicited. =Drummond ---------------- From: Drummond Reed [mailto:drummond.reed@cordance.net] Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 2:54 PM To: 'Schleiff, Marty'; 'Markus Sabadello' Cc: 'Barnhill, William'; xri@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: [xri] More on Special XRI TC Telecon 1PM PT Wednesday 2007-05-09 I find these arguments persuasive. I'm working this afternoon on addressing Marty's issue of making sure direct concatenation can be both simple from a user perspective and conceptually simple. I'll post something as soon as I can. =Drummond ---------------- From: Schleiff, Marty [mailto:marty.schleiff@boeing.com] Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 2:36 PM To: Markus Sabadello; Drummond Reed Cc: Barnhill, William; xri@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: [xri] More on Special XRI TC Telecon 1PM PT Wednesday 2007-05-09 Sadly, it seems to me that every time we raise issues with a recent proposal, we get a new proposal that is even more complex than the prior one. I agree with Markus that Cross-Resolution is too complicated. If we're going to change anything at all, the focus should be on simplification. I'm not opposed to direct concatenation if we can figure out how to make it simple (including simple from the user perspective AND conceptually simple). I believe that every subsequent enhancement to the original direct concatenation proposal introduces new complexities, and even breaks concepts that were clear in earlier versions. OpenId is looking better all the time. It's nowhere near as rich, but it's nowhere near as complex. Marty.Schleiff: <mailto:Marty.Schleiff@boeing.com> @boeing.com; CISSP Associate Technical Fellow - Cyber Identity Specialist Computing Security Infrastructure (206) 679-5933 ---------------- From: Markus Sabadello [mailto:markus.sabadello@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 12:34 PM To: Drummond Reed Cc: Barnhill, William; xri@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: Re: [xri] More on Special XRI TC Telecon 1PM PT Wednesday 2007-05-09 Hey, By now I also have a little bit of an opinion on this.. Since I'm still new to XRI, I see everything more from a user's perspective. I like Direct Concatentation because it makes i-names simpler. No non-techie will ever enter =yourname/(+contact) in any browser or other program, but =yourname/+contact may have a chance. As far as the Social Vulnerability is concerned, I am a bit confused by the role of <Ref> in Cross-Resolution. <Ref> is used for external references, i.e. to look somewhere else for a SEP if none could be found. It tells you that two XRIs identify the same target resource. Same with <Backref>. Now in my understanding, Cross-Resolution is intended to be used to verify a claimed relationship between a parent and child authority, which is something completely different. To mix these two mechanisms sounds scary to me. I think there should be no Cross-Resolution at all. Like Bill said, because it should be possible on a technical level to make any statements.. And also because of simplicity. Cross-Resolution makes things much more complicated and people won't know when and how to use it. We already have CanonicalID verification. That's enough. :) greetings, Markus On 5/10/07, Drummond Reed < drummond.reed@cordance.net : <mailto:drummond.reed@cordance.net> > wrote: Bill, Thanks very much for posting your views. I think you make a very important point that I haven't heard expressed by the other editors. As you sum it up: "I think a data authority needs to be able to make statements about other data authorities without their permission, otherwise any reputation or review system goes out the window, in my opinion. There are ways around that, but I'm not sure they'd work well." I think this means that you would argue that the cross-resolution proposal that appears on http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XriCd02/EqualsAtSocialVulnerability : <http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XriCd02/EqualsAtSocialVulnerability> should be an optional feature of an XRI resolver, not a required feature. This is a subject I'd like to discuss further on the TC telecon tomorrow (under #3 on the agenda I just sent out). I hope you'll be able to make it. =Drummond -----Original Message----- From: Barnhill, William [mailto: barnhill_william@bah.com: <mailto:barnhill_william@bah.com> ] Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2007 1:16 PM To: Drummond Reed; xri@lists.oasis-open.org : <mailto:xri@lists.oasis-open.org> Subject: RE: [xri] More on Special XRI TC Telecon 1PM PT Wednesday 2007-05-09 Unfortunately I will be unable to make the call it looks like, but I do have some comments: http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XriCd02/DirectConcatenation: <http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XriCd02/DirectConcatenation> : - For $ip, how would ipv6 be represented - In the weeds, but it would be nice if PTR syntax was supported by $DNS. If not, then vendors can come up with a method as they need to. - Wouldn't #11's mailto:.. Need to be in an xref? http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XriCd02/EqualsAtSocialVulnerability : <http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XriCd02/EqualsAtSocialVulnerability> : Social Vulnerability of =/@ Concatenation: -Rather than "Therefore the use of an =name or @name in the context of another =name or @name implies a direct relationship between these resources that may or may not exist in reality", I view it as "Therefore the use of an =nameA or @nameA in the context of another =nameB or @nameB implies that the data authority for =nameB or @nameB is making a statement about =nameA or @nameA that may or may not be true, and may or may not be agreed upon by the data authority for =nameA or @nameA." Confusion of @ Name Concatentation with Email Address Syntax: Yes, this will be a problem. Not sure it's a technical problem though, but one of perception. It sounds like options 1-8 all disallow authority A making statements about authority B (Note I'm using 'about' not 'for'). Not sure if any of them would allow A to make statements about B if A used the long version of xref sytnax or not. I think when we start saying that data for which A is an authority is governed by certain restrictions it starts sliding the slope of special cases. I can put on my website that Mr. 1234 is an 3-eyed sloth. Doesn't mean that he is, and if I claim that information is true and it's not that should affect the reputation associated with my identity. If what I say about him falls under certain guidelines it will be actionable as libel. Either way the issue is a social or legal one, not technical. I think a data authority needs to be able to make statements about other data authorities without their permission, otherwise any reputation or review system goes out the window, in my opinion. There are ways around that, but I'm not sure they'd work well. -- William Barnhill Phone: (315) 491-6765 Associate Email: barnhill_william@bah.com: <mailto:barnhill_william@bah.com> Booz | Allen | Hamilton i-name: =Bill.Barnhill "Delivering results that endure" -----Original Message----- From: Drummond Reed [mailto: drummond.reed@cordance.net: <mailto:drummond.reed@cordance.net> ] Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2007 5:17 AM To: xri@lists.oasis-open.org: <mailto:xri@lists.oasis-open.org> Subject: [xri] More on Special XRI TC Telecon 1PM PT Wednesday 2007-05-09 Two new wiki pages have been posted to provide the background for the issues to be discussed on the special XRI TC telecon Wednesday at 1PM PT (see telecon info below): http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XriCd02/DirectConcatenation http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XriCd02/EqualsAtSocialVulnerability: <http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XriCd02/EqualsAtSocialVulnerability> The first one describes direct concatenation syntax, parse trees, and resolution rules. The second one describes the social vulnerability problem of =/@ concatenation and a slate of proposed solutions. Please read them over before the call if you are able. =Drummond -----Original Message----- From: Drummond Reed [mailto: drummond.reed@cordance.net: <mailto:drummond.reed@cordance.net> ] Sent: Monday, May 07, 2007 1:46 PM To: xri@lists.oasis-open.org: <mailto:xri@lists.oasis-open.org> Subject: [xri] Special XRI TC Telecon 1PM PT Wednesday 2007-05-09 XRI TC Members: As the XRI Syntax editors try to close the last key issues remaining before producing XRI Syntax 2.1, we will be holding a special telecon open to all members of the TC this Wednesday at 1PM Pacific time. This call will be in addition to our normal call on Thursdays at 10AM PT. We will send out an additional email with an agenda and wiki links before the telecon, but we want to invite all TC members to put in on their calendars. We will use the standard TC telecon number (thanks to NeuStar for hosting this): TO ACCESS THE AUDIO CONFERENCE: Dial In Number: 571-434-5750 Conference ID: 5474 =Drummond
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