[OpenID] host-meta and "acct:"

[Peter Williams]

I compared the work product you referenced with
http://xrds-simple.net/core/1.0/ (an abandoned work).

Just note the sheer difference in writing style! While staying within the
scope of the IETF work item, the I-D will ideally go back to the mixed
description/specification style of the pro-genitor work. 

Once one becomes a formal WG chair, it's tempting to be so concise and embue
such logical correctness into English terms while specification writing that
it ends up sounding like one of those immortal OSI standards from CCITT/ISO
- written in a technical language that only 3 people in the world could
speak natively. And they all sat on the committee.
 
The earlier work I cited does address an issue I dont understand - once cast
into current XRD 1.0 and host-meta terms. See
http://xrds-simple.net/core/1.0/#go_fetch (last paragraph). The topic is
refering to elements of an XRD, given the locator url and its fragments. 

The problem I had initially with your criticism, if you recall, had ignorant
ol' me focussing on the XRD.Link.Subject (vs XRD.Subject). I wanted the URI
(with fragment) to refer to a particular link element, in order that the
metadata in the link acted as descriptor for that (naming) URI. This seemed
to align XRD and openid identifiers with semweb. This would allow us all to
observe only 1 religion about names and addresses.

In the abandoned work, fragments on (I think) "returned" locators in such as
the HTTP Response X-XRDS-Locator URI (or a meta's http-equiv content value)
could have fragments, which might have pointed to a particular element link
within the XRD, once retrieved. The fragments had seemingly special
relationship to the xml:id value (an XML construct) on the link element
rather than the link.subject (an XRD construct) in the link markup.

For my part, I now struggle on that topic with the current proposal: what
concepts got dropped or recast in new form? Things start to swirl. 

Was the XRDS-Locator different to a 301, 302 or 303, in some subtle way? Was
there some inner subtlety about using xml:id (given its relationship to DOM3
trees)? Was there a hookup with issues of xml dsig signing (and its default
resolvers)? Did the whole issue just disappear? if so, why and what cost?

Some of this context is what the IETF I-D needs to bring back, rather than
be so parsimonious and doctrinal about domains are XRi-like authorities,
authorities in URI schemes are an embodiment of XRI-like authorities,
domains and domain-names have a mystical relationships to authority  fields
scheme (and thence to the authorites governing an RDF graph node).....
cocnepts that only the higher initiates in the identity gang can comprehend.







http://xrds-simple.net/core/1.0/





Santosh Rajan wrote:
> 
> http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-hammer-hostmeta-01.txt
> 
> If you have read the spec above, you will wonder where did the "acct:"
> scheme come from. It came from webfinger. The host-meta spec has been
> work in progress for a while now. Its predecessor was the "site-meta"
> spec. The idea of webfinger came later, in may 2009,and the idea of
> "acct:" about two months back. Given that webfinger is to follow
> host-meta, the question is "How come host-meta is following
> webfinger?".
> 
> Think about it. There is an obvious attempt to legitimize the "acct:"
> scheme here. That is not a bad idea. I like it actually. Consider
> this. If I type "acct:santrajan at gmail.com
> <acct%3Asantrajan at gmail.com>" into my browser location bar, my browser
> would retrieve my XRD. Now this is an extreme example. But I hope you
> get the idea. If not please ask me.
> 
> Unfortunately I have a problem with this idea, even though I like it,
> this is not the way to do it. The problem is that if you want to
> legitimize "acct:" you need to be a software engineer contortionist.
> You need to "Reject" Subject from the host-meta, and you need to add
> "Scope" into the host-meta.
> 
> My contention is that if you really want to this, (and I like the
> idea), let us get all the DNS, w3c folk on board and do it. Doing it
> via the "backdoor" is going to cause more harm to the "identity
> movement" than good.
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://hi.im/santosh
> 
> _______________________________________________
> general mailing list
> general at lists.openid.net
> http://lists.openid.net/mailman/listinfo/openid-general
> 
> 
> -----
> 
> Santosh Rajan
> http://santrajan.blogspot.com 
> 

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