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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

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