CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Jim Fullton/MCNC - CNIDR Minutes of the Uniform Resource Identifiers Working Group (URI) Session I The meeting began with introductions, followed by Tim Berners-Lee's presentation of the current URL draft. After discussion, the following changes were proposed: o Remove the AFS type. o Add the ``mailto'' type, mailto:timbl@cern.ch, designed to be a generalized mail transmission URL, and to help solve the problem of how to contact an author. o Wrapping---the formal URL wrapper is defined as <>. A significant portion of the first session was spent discussing the merits of creating a more generalized URL specification, with the current specification as a specific case. Peter Deutsch advocates the creation of this far more generalized specification and will examine the issue further before the next IETF. During these discussions, it became clear that the allowable character set needed refining. The three general proposals were: 1. No restrictions on character sets. 2. Significant restrictions on the character set; i.e. the current document. 3. Looser restrictions on the character set, but stay with the current proposal. Further discussion of URL issues was put off until the third session. Chris Weider closed out the first session with a tutorial on current URN issues. Session II The second session was spent on URN issues. Karen Sollins made a presentation describing a system under development at MIT. After further discussion of URNs, the group agreed that several issues 1 needed to be resolved before URNs could be properly specified: o Detection of duplicates o Fragment specifiers o Version specifiers o Type specifiers After vast amounts of discussion, fragment, version, and typing information was moved to a Uniform Resource Citation object, which has not received a formal name. The URN was defined as a URN identifier (RURNS), a naming authority string and an opaque string defined by the naming authority as being unique within its name space. The whole URN is wrapped in <>, just like a URL: A URN should occupy the same character space as a URL, for ease of applications upgrades. Session III The discussion of URLs was continued in the third session. Mitra led a discussion about modifications to the URL character set, and the group agreed to modify the URL draft to allow the use of the following characters: : ; = ' '' Other characters not included in the draft are excluded. A vote on the modified draft was held, with the group recommending adoption of the modified draft by a vote of twenty-nine to one. The URN format as described in the second session was informally agreed upon, which led into a discussion of naming authorities. It is assumed that many naming authorities will exist, including authorities within an organization whose existence will not be known outside the organization. 2 Next Time At the next IETF, an agenda item will be specified for a ``sub-ID'' discussion to define the format of the naming authority string and opaque string. Attendees Matti Aarnio mea@nic.nordu.net Chris Adie C.J.Adie@edinburgh.ac.uk Harald Alvestrand Harald.Alvestrand@uninett.no Tim Berners-Lee timbl@info.cern.ch Zavisa Bjelogrlic zavisa@roma.intecs.it Jodi-Ann Chu jodi@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu James Conklin jbc@bitnic.educom.edu Glen Daniels gub@elf.com Peter Deutsch peterd@bunyip.com Alan Emtage bajan@bunyip.com Urs Eppenberger eppenberger@switch.ch Jill Foster Jill.Foster@newcastle.ac.uk Jim Fullton fullton@cnidr.org Kevin Gamiel kgamiel@cnidr.org Ben Geerlings ben.geerlings@surfnet.nl Anders Gillner awg@sunet.se Judith Grass grass@cnri.reston.va.us Maria Heijne maria.heijne@surfnet.nl Marco Hernandez marco@mh-slip.cren.edu Rune Hjelsvold Rune.Hjelsvold@idt.unit.no Nandor Horvath horvath@sztaki.hu Per Jacobsen p.h.jacobsen@usit.uio.no Xander Jansen xander.jansen@surfnet.nl Olle Jarnefors ojarnef@admin.kth.se Borka Jerman-Blazic jerman-blazic@ijs.si Brewster Kahle Brewster@wais.com Michael Khalandovsky mlk@ftp.com Lothar Klein lothar.klein@gmd.de Jim Knowles jknowles@binky.arc.nasa.gov Peter Koch pk@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de John Kunze jak@violet.berkeley.edu Pekka Kytolaakso pekka.kytolaakso@csc.fi Thomas Lenggenhager lenggenhager@switch.ch Steen Linden steen.linden@uni-c.dk John Lindsay lindsay@kingston.ac.uk Anne Lord anne@ripe.net April Marine april@atlas.arc.nasa.gov Chip Matthes chip@delphi.com Brian May Brian.May@mel.dit.csiro.au Mitra mitra@pandora.sf.ca.us Keith Moore moore@cs.utk.edu Mark Needleman mhn@stubbs.ucop.edu Clifford Neuman bcn@isi.edu 3 Lisa Nielsen lisa@hawaii.edu Lars-Gunnar Olsson Lars-Gunnar.Olsson@data.slu.se Jorg Ott jo@cs.tu-berlin.de Jim Rees Jim.Rees@umich.edu Ulla Sandberg ulla@kiera.ericsson.se Rickard Schoultz schoultz@admin.kth.se David Sitman a79vm.tau.ac.il Karen Sollins sollins@lcs.mit.edu Milan Sova sova@feld.cvut.cz Simon Spero simon_spero@unc.edu Arend van den Boogaart a.k.vandenboogaart@research.ptt.nl Marc van der Noordaa noordaa@rare.nl Guido van Rossum guido@cwi.nl Ton Verschuren Ton.Verschuren@SURFnet.nl Chris Weider clw@merit.edu 4