xmlhack: URI activity picks up

The W3C/IETF URI Planning Interest Group has published URIs, URLs, and URNs: Clarifications and Recommendations 1.0 as a Note, while Tim Berners-Lee suggested that "Content-Types should be defined by URIs".

The W3C Note explores old territory and proposes new solutions:

"addresses and attempts to clarify two issues pertaining to URIs, and presents recommendations. Section 1 addresses how URI space is partitioned and the relationship between URIs, URLs, and URNs. Section 2 describes how URI schemes and URN namespace ids are registered. Section 3 mentions additional unresolved issues not considered by this paper and section 4 presents recommendations."

The most difficult of the Recommendations suggests that:

"The W3C and IETF should jointly develop and endorse a model for URIs, URLs and URNs consistent with the '"Contemporary View" described in section 1, and which considers the additional URI issues listed or alluded to in section 3.M"

Most of the other recommendations are about registration issues or the transition from 'URL' to 'URI' in IETF documents.

Simultaneously, Tim Berners-Lee proposed more dramatic change in the role of URIs in the IETF universe:

"Content-Types should be defined by URIs, as are XML Namespaces. These then leverage the existing URI schemes to anchor thier meanings in the web. This allows anyone to make a local private Content-Type or namespace for their own use. This does NOT apply to URI schemes. The process has to be rooted somewhere, and that root is the URI spec and the *small* set of URI schemes."

Berners-Lee sees the growing number of URI scheme registrations as "harmful", and suggests that "New ones should only be introduced if absolutely necessary."