This has been discussed to death and really should be a FAQ by now, but it's not written up, so I'll add a few points:<br><br>-- we should discuss this as a generic email to URL mapping problem, and ignore what is done with that URL then. yes, it could be used as an OpenID<br>
<br>-- that said, with directed identity in OpenID 2.0, a user just needs to type in "<a href="http://yahoo.com">yahoo.com</a>", or press the pretty yahoo button. No typing.<br><br>-- For email-to-URL, NAPTR by itself is a non-starter. Technically it may be the correct
way, but average people don't control their DNS. Hell,
networksolutions doesn't even let you add SRV or TXT records.<br>
<br>-- A good solution to email-to-URL mapping will likely involve an XRDS-Simple-style two-pronged discovery lookup path. Whereas XRDS-Simple says "try Accept header, then parse the <head> tag", a good email-to-URL lookup "protocol" (best practice?) might be to try NAPTR first, then fall back to this:<br>
<br><a href="http://brad.livejournal.com/2357444.html">http://brad.livejournal.com/2357444.html</a><br><br>- Brad<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2008/4/1 Paul E. Jones <<a href="mailto:paulej@packetizer.com">paulej@packetizer.com</a>>:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div link="blue" vlink="purple" lang="EN-US">
<div>
<p>Folks,</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I've seen discussion here and there on the use of the
e-mail address as the OpenID identifier. Perhaps this one says it best:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.majordojo.com/2007/02/what-openid-needs.php" target="_blank">http://www.majordojo.com/2007/02/what-openid-needs.php</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>I share many of same opinions. If OpenID is going to
be practically usable by the average person, we cannot require the person to
remember some very complex identifier. When I signed up for Yahoo's
OpenID service, it presented me with a hideously ugly URL that looked similar
to a base64-encoded string. I could not begin to tell you what it
was. Fortunately, Yahoo allowed me to define my own, friendlier
name. Still, the ID is not one that the average user will remember or get
right.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>While the e-mail address does not have to be the one's
ID, it can certainly serve as an alias. Suppose, for example, that the
DNS records at Yahoo contained the following entry:</p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;">
<a href="http://yahoo.com" target="_blank">yahoo.com</a>. IN NAPTR 100 10 "U" "OpenID2"
"^(.+)@(.*)$!https://me.yahoo.com/\1!i"</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>This would allow a Relaying Party to accept an e-mail
address and perform a simple transformation to get the "real" URL identifier.
Of course, this does not mean that the existing URL or XRI identifiers are
invalid, nor does it mean that the "email address" has to be a real
e-mail address. But, this form would certainly be far simpler for most
people to deal use.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If something like this has been discussed and rejected, what
was the reason?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Thanks,</p>
<p>Paul</p>
<p> </p>
</div>
</div>
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