Re: [Scrollkeeper-devel] Simple URI's

[Dan M. <d-...@uc...>]

On Mon, 4 Dec 2000, Ali Abdin wrote:

> * Ali Abdin (ali...@au...) wrote at 22:26 on 04/12/00:
> > * Laszlo Kovacs (las...@su...) wrote at 16:36 on 04/12/00:
> > > > Let the users use bookmarks.  On a network with multiple architectures,
> > > > does "modem-HOWTO" refer to the Linux, FreeBSD, or Solaris document?
> > > > 
> > > > If an individual user wants to create their own aliases for
> > > > documentation, they should probably be able to do so.  The user can then
> > > > have the burden of deciding which short name maps to which document, and
> > > > is in a much better position to know that they want "modem-HOWTO" to
> > > > point to the Solaris document.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Or the sysadmin decides where these URI's point to depending on machine
> > > type.
> > 
> > The "short name" should be settable by the sysadmin (for Desktop users, they
> > are the sysadmins). Each doc should have by default its own shortname.
> 
> Oh, doh - if they change the short name, there goes all your cross-references.
> 
> The proper solution is to cross-reference by UUID, but that won't work...no
> authors would do it then...

You don't typically want the completely unique identification (UUID is for
{document, language, version, format}, but the document identifier (NUID
is what I called it) {document but not language, version, or format}.  
This would be mapped onto names to make things "nice" like IP addresses
are mapped onto names.  Of course we won't use a DNS server - we'd put the
name into the metadata and use a database on the web for reference use
only.  It would still be a "first come, first serve" basis for giving out
names (like domain names), although inappropriate use would be frowned
upon of course.

Dan