<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">
<div>Does anyone have the time to write an email -> xrds discovery spec so we can formally ignore it? And so people can argue with their dns providers instead of on list?</div><div><br></div><div><div>http:// Joseph Holsten .com</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></div><br><div><html>On 02008:04:01, at 9:30CDT, Paul E. Jones wrote:</html><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"> <div class="Section1"><p class="MsoNormal">Folks,<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">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:<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.majordojo.com/2007/02/what-openid-needs.php">http://www.majordojo.com/2007/02/what-openid-needs.php</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">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:<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New""> yahoo.com. IN NAPTR 100 10 "U" "OpenID2" "^(.+)@(.*)$!<a href="https://me.yahoo.com/\1!i">https://me.yahoo.com/\1!i</a>"<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">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.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">If something like this has been discussed and rejected, what was the reason?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Thanks,<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Paul<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">_______________________________________________</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">specs mailing list</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="mailto:specs@openid.net">specs@openid.net</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/specs">http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/specs</a></div> </blockquote></div><br></body></html>