The case for being insensitive

Title: Message

Hi 
TC'ers,

 

I 
agree with Mike except for the comment portion of the XRI.  Maybe the spec. 
should read:

 

Two 
XRIs are equivalent if the NON-COMMENT portions of the XRIs are byte-for-byte 
equivalent.

 

That 
being the normative part of the spec.  At this point, some people may 
mis-interpret the intent (as I did), so maybe a discussion of case sensitivity 
in regards to resolution should follow (non-normative):

 

During resolution, the manager of each namespace may have their own rules 
for case sensitivity and equivalence in general.  One namespace owner 
might consider "Invoice" and "invoice" to be the same for the purposes of 
resolution.  Another may consider "grey" and "gray" to be the same.  
Since you can't know that without invoking the resolution process, they should 
be considered different XRIs that happen to point to the same 
resource.

 

Obviously, this is a sensitive issue  :-)

 

=Loren 

  

  
-----Original Message-----
From: Lindelsee, Mike 
  [mailto:] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2003 
  11:57 AM
To: 
Subject: RE: [xri] 
  Draft -07 feedback from another Visa person (responses 
  cont'd)

  
Hi 
  All,

  
 

  
I'd 
  like to follow up on the case-insensitivity issue and mention what I see as a 
  reasonable example that would argue against case-insensitivity.  In my 
  experience, the vast majority of my accounts/login IDs on various systems are 
  case sensitive.  Also, in unix-based systems (and many others), 
  most identifiers (anything in the file system for sure) are case 
  sensitive.  If any of these identifiers are to be used in XRIs, 
  the case-sensitivity would need to be maintained, or ambiguity would be 
  introduced.

  
 

  
Between this issue and the Unicode issue, it seems to 
  me that it would be a bad idea to try to make any part of an XRI case 
  insensitive.

  
 

  
Mike

  
    
-----Original Message-----
From: Loren West 
    [mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 
    11:36 AM
To: 'Dave McAlpin'; 'Sakimura, Nat'; 'Wachob, Gabe'; 
    
Subject: RE: [xri] Draft -07 feedback 
    from another Visa person (responses cont'd)

    
Case insensitivity is a form of normalization that a large population 
    of people receive benefit from.  If there's a way to provide that 
    benefit to those people without degrading functionality where it doesn't 
    make sense, then I think we should do it.

    
 

    
I'd hate to see case insensitivity for ALPHA characters go 
    away.

    
 

    
=LOREN

    
 

    

    
-----Original Message-----
From: 
    Dave McAlpin [mailto:] 
Sent: Thursday, 
    September 04, 2003 11:06 AM
To: 'Sakimura, Nat'; 'Wachob, Gabe'; 
    
Subject: RE: [xri] Draft -07 feedback 
    from another Visa person (responses cont'd)

    
      

      
So are we OK with 
      case-insensitive comparison for ALPHA characters in the authority 
      component, or should we drop this altogether?

      
 

      
-----Original 
      Message-----
From: 
      Sakimura, Nat [mailto:] 
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 
      10:57 AM
To: Dave 
      McAlpin; Wachob, Gabe; 
Subject: RE: [xri] Draft -07 feedback 
      from another Visa person (responses cont'd)

      
 

      
I do 
      not think that there is a good way of introducing “case insensitivity” to 
      Unicode in general. 

      
Case 
      insensitivity is a form of normalization, which is very problematic for 
      the international character set. IMHO, only meaningful form of general 
      equivalence is the bit to bit comparison or the comparison of the resolved 
      result from the same authority. 

      
 

      
Nat

      
 

      

      
-----Original 
      Message-----
From: Dave 
      McAlpin [mailto:] 
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 2:43 
      AM
To: 'Wachob, Gabe'; 
      
Subject: RE: [xri] Draft -07 feedback 
      from another Visa person (responses cont'd)