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Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 19:27:25 +0200
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Subject: Blocks URIs
From: Stefano Mazzocchi <stefano@apache.org>
To: Apache Cocoon <dev@cocoon.apache.org>
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I spent the afternoon cleaning up the block section in the wiki and, 
after an interesting discussion I had with Tim Berners-Lee over at 
www-tag@w3.org, I was looking at the Block URI concept again and found 
out that, as TimBL suggested in another context, the use of HTTP URI 
might yield unforseen results.

I proposed to deprecate the use of http: as URI scheme identifier for 
the blocks because I wanted to remove the "direct dereferencing" 
ability and wanted to introduce a lookup mechanism.

As TimBL suggested while referencing to the XML namespaces that include 
an HTTP URI, the ability to "directly look it up" is powerful. And any 
non-dereferenciable URI (such as my proposed cob: scheme) is simply 
another URN and the lookup machanism is just a reinvention of what's 
already there.

After careful thinking, I think he is totally right.

So, regarding to this, I proposed the following changes:

  1) substitute cob: with http:
  2) substitute the http://apache.org/cocoon/blocks/*** namespace uri 
with http://apache.org/cocoon/*** and keep 
http://apache.org/cocoon/blocks/*** for block URI

#2 is required for proper handling of dereferenced cocoon namespaces.

What will be found at those block URI is yet to be decided, but having 
the ability to do it is powerful and should not be thrown away.

Comments?

--
Stefano.