I agree with Markus' and Les' comments. Between option 3 (#) and 4 ($), I strongly prefer # for the dictionary space because it is already the broadly adopted sign for a hashtag, and while not a perfect match for the dictionary space, it is close enough.
In addition, I have always thought that $ is a good symbol for the reserved space, and interestingly enough, both # and $ as symbols represent quantities, and they would now be the two symbols representing classes (# for generic classes and $ for reserved classes).
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 5:44 AM, Chasen, Les <> wrote:
Option 1 looks too much like an email address and in the case of =drummond@home is a legal email address. I think i prefer either option 3 (#) or option 4 ($).
From: =Drummond Reed <>
Date: Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 11:07 PM
To: OASIS - XDI TC <>
Subject: [xdi] The Great Symbol Swap
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
