Re: [Uri-review] Want a suggestion

["Daniel R. Tobias" <dan at tobias.name>]

On 22 Jul 2005 at 17:25, John Xiaogang Zhang wrote:

> To describe the issue, lets start from email address. My
> understanding, an email address is actually a user ID, and  the email
> address "xiaogang at gridmo.com" identifies the user "xiaogang" which
> defined at "gridmo.com".

It could be a "user", but does not necessarily represent a login 
userid on that system; it could be a mailbox, list, or mail 
forwarding record.  What it represents is entirely system-specific, 
internal to the receiving system.

> The same can apply to mailling lists and groups (mailling lists can be
> considered as a kind of groups). I may define a group named as "grp1"
> at the server "gridmo.com", and refer it as "grp1 at gridmo.com" in the
> internet.

"In the internet" is meaningless in this context, as you have not 
specified what specific protocol is being used to define and use such 
a "group".

> Now, for some reason, I want to define some system-independent groups,
> and store these information in some internat file (don't ask me why).
> Assume a group id "grp2" is defined in an internet file with a URL
> "myprotolcol:\\gridmo.com\mydir\mygrps.myml", and I want to refer this
> group over the internet.

In normal URIs, assuming that hierarchical paths starting with a 
hostname are being used, there would be forward slashes there instead 
of the backslashes you showed.

> My questions:
> 1. Is there any existing standard to refer such a group (or close
> enough)? 2. If not, then what is the best way to refer it?

I wouldn't expect there to be unless "group" were actually defined 
more specifically than the vague description you gave.

> My currently intention is, refer it as
> 
>   "grp2 at gridmo.com\mydir\mygrps.myml"
> 
> so that the format will consist with (at least close enough to)
> existing user/group (or email address / mailing list) format.

Clearly inadequate, due to its failure to specify a protocol; also, 
in the standard URI format (assuming the backslashes are corrected to 
forward slashes) the "grp2@" part would be treated as a userid for 
"gridmo.com" since it directly precedes this hostname, rather than as 
something defined in the full URI.

> Another possible but ugly alternative is,
> 
>   "grp2 at myprotolcol:\\gridmo.com\mydir\mygrps.myml"

That's not a proper URI, since there's no provision for anything to 
the left of the protocol.

What you (perhaps) want (it's rather unclear what you really want) 
might be expressed as a parameter or a fragment ID on the URI:

myprotocol://gridmo.com/mydir/mygrps.myml?group=grp2
myprotocol://gridmo.com/mydir/mygrps.myml#grp2



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