On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 12:42:31AM +0200, Petr Viktorin wrote: > On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 00:04, Blaine Cook <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 16 March 2010 21:16, Melvin Carvalho <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > >>> HTTP URLs don't work as addresses *for people*. > >> > [snip] > > The fundamental problem, IMO, is that any fully qualified, unique ID > is just too long. > > I would very much like to see some kind of local aliases. Here's the > idea (Concrete syntax/terminology might be different of course): > If I write "@fred", the software knows I want the Fred from my "friend list". > If I want to reply to someone I don't know, I can use a full URL. > *** Using a "universal identifier" in the form u...@domain poses a serious problem of compatibility with the HTTP URI scheme: in the HTTP protocol (as well as FTP and probably others), u...@domain refers to the *authenticating user*, not the user supposedly represented at the said URI. In that sense, email and XMPP are exceptions to the rule.
PSYC uses the concept of UNI, for Uniform Network Identifier, which is basically an URL for humans. It takes the form of psyc://domain.tld/~user and thus matches the traditional HTTP or IMAP URI for a user (see examples in RFC5092). RFC2396 says however that: The tilde ~ character was added to those in the "unreserved" set, since it is extensively used on the Internet in spite of the difficulty to transcribe it with some keyboards. Yes, PSYC UNIs are long. But (1) it's mostly for programs to talk to each other and (2) people can use aliases, and maybe pass this alias<->UNI correspondance along with the message, so that other people know what Fred you're talking about. On the other hand, using a shortcut such as u...@domain doesn't scale across protocols, and still require marking the JID, er Email?, with the appropriate protocol. See: http://about.psyc.eu/Jabber#JIDs_aren.27t_flexible_enough for more arguments against using that syntax, especiaally in the enlarged context of multiple protocols talking to each other. == hk
