values of Type

[Martin Atkins]

Drummond Reed wrote:
> 
> However I fully agree that Type values SHOULD be absolute in order to reduce
> the potential for collision. So Andy's examples SHOULD have
> "+authentication" and "+photos", as these are absolute XRIs. (Note that
> these are equivalent to "xri://+authentication" and "xri://+photos", i.e.,
> the "xri://" part is optional with absolute XRIs that start with global
> context symbols (=, @, +, $, !. This was conscious design decision to
> simplify human usability, e.g., to type a global XRI in an editor or address
> bar only requires a single symbol character.) 
> 

While this almost certainly isn't the place for this concern, I feel
that such "shortcuts" should only apply in places where users type in a
value and it's used transiently.

Browsers allow users to omit the "http://" part of an HTTP URL when
entering one into the address bar, but it's still advisable to always
*store* it as a full, canonical URL. Likewise, I think it's advisable to
require XRIs that are stored in some way, such as in these XRD
documents, to be fully-qualified.

The difference here is one of context. In a browser address bar, we can
guess that most entered URLs are going to be HTTP ones. Likewise in
something that operates on XRIs it can assume that the thing being
entered is probably an XRI. However, in a field marked "anyuri" there is
no such context, and processors shouldn't be forced to know the
canonocalization rules for every single URL scheme out there in order to
make sense of a document.