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Global meaning of tags (was Re: single <auth> per cert)
J. Lasser wrote:
>
> On Apr 2, Bryce <bryce@digicash.com> wrote:
>
> > Hm. It still seems to me that the natural thing to do, in
> > keeping with the SPKI precepts, is to declare that there are no
> > global meanings of tags, that trying to _make_ global meanings of
> > tags is going to get you into a can of worms, and that you can
> > accomplish what you want anyway by using local meanings of tags.
>
> I'd ditto this... is this a sort of parallel to the SDSI claim that there
> is no (useful) global namespace? It seems to me a common-sense extension
> of that philosophy.
Gentlemen, I disagree.
While I agree that there is no global namespace, I do not see
the common-sense extension of this principle to tags. Of course
many applications and organisations will define their own tags,
but the Internet community would benefit a lot if we define
some common tags and a generic extension mechanism a la MIME.
Let's take a look at some common tags used in recent examples
on this mailinglist (btw. all from Ron's messages, thanks!):
( tag ( telnet microsoft.com billg ) )
T1 = ( tag ( * append ( ftp "abc.com" )))
tag T1 = ( tag ( spend
( account citicorp 123456 )
( date ( * date-range 1996-01-01 1997-12-31 ) )
( value ( * number-in-range 0 9999 ) )
) )
( tag ( http ( * strings-with-prefix "http://a.com/" ) billg ) )
To me it looks pretty obvious that standard tags are needed for http,
ftp, telnet,
etc. What is wrong with a global representation in these cases?
Who should define such standard tags?
Who registers them?
Are general guidelines needed for "tag designers"?
Best regards
Steen
--
Steen Koefoed Larsen
SITA R&D Nice, France | @ Home
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