Document: draft-vandesompel-info-uri-02.txt
Review: Joel M. Halpern
Date: 30 november 2004 

I believe that this document should not be published in the current
form as an Informational RFC.  It is possible that the questions below
can be answered in a fashion that makes publication suitable.
However, if so, the explanations should appear more clearly in the
rationale section.


Question: Should this URI Schemes be defined in Informational RFCs?
According to RFC 2717, Informational should only be used for schemes
which are already in wide usage.  This may be a case of what RFC 2717
calls "Alternative Trees", but the syntax and structure does not match
that required for alternative trees.

Question: This document seems to create a registry (the info:
registry) that does almost the same thing as the URL scheme registry.
It would seem that the ddc and lccn namespaces (used in the examples)
could just as easily be URL schemes in their own right.  Is this true?
If so, is there an advantage to the indirection?  Should this instead
explicitly use the "alternative trees" approach and syntax from 2717,
and explain why that is being used?

Question: Reading RFC 2718 and the rationale section of this document,
it appears that what is being defined is not a "locator" but rather a
"name" that the definers have chosen to define in a way that is not a
syntactically valid URN.  Presumably, the community had a good reason
for introducing the distinction between a URN and a URL.  Should this
scheme blur the lines this badly.


Lesser Question: Is it known whether any / many / some of the
information sources listed in the document would wish to use this
mechanism?  If not, this becomes close to group A defining something
about group B, without B's participation.  (I think the answer is
probably yes because those folks are members of NISO, but the question
does need to be answered explicitly.)