Some feedback from Andy Dale at Respect Network.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Andy Dale <>
Date: Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 11:33 PM
Subject: Re: The Great Symbol Swap
To: =Drummond Reed <>
My 10 cents:
I like the # for the dictionary space. I think that the common usage of "hashtag" actually maps fairly well "finally home #home"... =drummond#home
This would move the @ to the numbered element of a collection which also works for me as @ = 'at': I want the email at position 1... [#email]@1
Clearly these are both rationalizations but, to me they seem as good as any.
Andy
On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 11:07 PM, =Drummond Reed <> wrote:
In an XDI-related marketing meeting last Tuesday, the marketers in attendance came up with a dramatic new idea: changing the XDI context symbol for organizational/legal identifiers from @ to +.
The reason is simply that Twitter has created a defacto usage of @identifiers. By switching from @ to +:
Any perceptual or branding conflict with @identifiers would be eliminated.
We keep the personal and organizational/legal namespaces completely separated (as has always been our intention).
The + symbol has a nice symbiosis with = (both are mathematical symbols).
+ has the connotation of "partnership".
If other XDI TC members agree about this, it leaves the question of what should become the context symbol for the dictionary space. There are 4 basic options:
Use the @ symbol, e.g., =drummond@home, =drummond@home<@email>
Use the * symbol, e.g., =drummond*home, =drummond*home<*email>
Use the # symbol, e.g., =drummond#home, =drummond#home<#email>
Use the $ symbol, e.g., =drummond$home, =drummond$home<$email>
In the first case, it would be a direct swap of + and @. This would have the minimum impact on existing code bases.
In the other three cases, we'd have a three way symbol swap.
This is obviously an important change, so I'm going to put in on the agenda for tomorrow's XDI TC call.
=Drummond
