For the issues around formats, have you considered using content negotiation?
http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.html#sec-12.1 WRT XHTML, it's a candidate for deprecation for a different reason; the W3C is moving away from XHTML as part of the HTML5 effort. Current fashion for this type of problem is to use microformats / RDFa, but that's still work-in-progress from a standards standpoint, AIUI. Cheers, On 22/04/2010, at 7:06 AM, Kim Davies wrote: > Hi all, > > A few comments from the perspective of IANA staff maintaining the website > infrastructure: > > a) This is a timely discussion as we have been discussing this very issue > internally. The thought was coming up with better guidance on referencing > IANA registries in such a way the provides better clarity on what URI > patterns are considered dependable. This is recognising that with the > multiple formats we now publish of many registries, there are multiple URIs > that can point to the same registry data. > > b) The classical registry URI patterns have been > http://www.iana.org/assignments/%s and ftp://ftp.iana.org/assignments/%s > which we preserve to date. I don't think we have any intention of breaking > any of these URIs in the future. However, URIs ending with .xhtml etc. are > derivative and possibly subject to change. > > c) To my mind, a central question is not the preservation of the URI, but > what is the expectation of preserving the format of the content at the URI. > For most registries this is probably not an issue, but there is probably an > assumption the registries at http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers and > http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry - to pick on two - > will always be of a certain consistent format. As a counter example, we > piloted removing the legacy version of the "aodv-parameters" registry last > week, so if you go to http://www.iana.org/assignments/aodv-parameters it > redirects to the current XML URI of that registry. > > d) As part of a long term project that is nearing completion, our intention > is to keep the definitive version of all registries in XML format, with any > text, HTML etc. versions derivative from that. We have great flexibility in > what URIs these XML files and their derivatives are published to, but I > suspect would want to retain the ability of phasing out old formats and not > being wed to publishing all possible derivates in perpetuity. In fact, the > XHTML format may already be a candidate for deprecation with widespread > support of viewing the same data in the XML version converted in a browser > through client-side XSL. It would be useful to better understand whether the > essential ingredient is a URI that works and lists all formats and > contemporary URIs, or a URI that preserves the same legacy format, with new > file formats under new URI patterns. > > kim > > _______________________________________________ > Ietf mailing list > [email protected] > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf -- Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/ _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list [email protected] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
