Merging Capability Discovery and XRID Proposals into Spec

[Drummond Reed]

A few clarifications/questions RE several points in this thread. See
responses below.

>-----Original Message-----
>From: yadis-bounces at lists.danga.com [mailto:yadis-bounces at lists.danga.com]
>On Behalf Of Martin Atkins
>Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 12:15 AM
>To: yadis at lists.danga.com
>Subject: Re: Merging Capability Discovery and XRID Proposals into Spec
>
>[snip]
>
>I have a few niggles about the XRID stuff, though:
>* The "URI" element should not be mandatory inside "Service". Firstly
>both the OpenID and LID capabilities define what happens in the case
>where it is ommitted, and secondly not all services will have a URL
>endpoint. Consider for example:
>
><Service>
>   <Type version="1.0">http://www.typekey.com/signon<Type>
>   <umm:Username>johan</umm:Username>
></Service>
>
>While it is admittedly unlikely that anyone would use TypeKey through
>YADIS, it provides a good test case for services that are not URL-based.

Agreed, <URI> should be optional.

>Related to this is that there needs to be some more said about how the
>extra per-service elements are added. The spec seems to suggest that the
>service is free to dream up new XML elements and use them, which might
>make some XML-heads squirm. If that was the intention though, it should
>probably be made specific in the spec.

Sorry my original post was not specific enough. Thus the extensibility
design is that elements can be added from any XML namespace as you mention
below.

>The cleaner solution would be to mandate the use of XML namespaces as I
>did in my example, but that's an extra overhead for a format that's
>currently quite simple and unencumbered by such things. I see that
>Drummond Reed's original proposal made use of a namespace for the
>"keyInfo" element, but the namespace was not declared.

Again, that was just in the interest of brevity. That namespace (XML dsig)
does need to be called out. I just didn't include that the example.

In sum, I'd say the proposed design tries to reach a happy medium -- it's
fully formed/qualified XML for those who want to use XML parsing, but simple
enough so that's not required and text parsing will work fine.

Again, the detailed specs on XRID format forthcoming with XRI Resolution 2.0
Working Draft 09 at the end of the week.

=Drummond