Subject: [Uri-review] Review request of draft-ietf-geopriv-geo-uri

From: "Alexander Mayrhofer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:18:31 +0200

Hi,

This is a review request for the "geo" URI scheme, working group item of
the GEOPRIV working group, and specified in 

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-geopriv-geo-uri-01

Abstract: 

   "This document specifies an Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) for
   geographic locations using the 'geo' scheme name.  A 'geo' URI
   identifies a physical location in a two- or three-dimensional
   coordinate reference system in a compact, simple, human-readable, and
   protocol independent way.  The default coordinate reference system
   used is WGS-84."

This document has been around as an individual draft for some time, but
has been adopted by the GEOPRIV working group in the last meeting. The
WGs charter also contains a corresponding item to be completed late
2009. 

The URI scheme registration template is contained in section 4 of the
draft. I will also be available for face to face discussions in
Stockholm. Comments are very much appreciated!

Thanks 

Alex Mayrhofer

---

From: Bjoern Hoehrmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:41:48 +0200

>http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-geopriv-geo-uri-01

It references RFC 4234 which has been obsoleted by RFC 5234.

Section 9.1 is contradictory, it calls geo:94,0 both valid and invalid.

I believe section 7 should be marked non-normative.

In section 6.2. the markup is improperly wrapped. It should be wrapped
e.g. after the "<a " as white space may occur there, but not where it
is currently specified.

In 6.2. "URI parameter" should be just "parameter" or use some other
term; there aren o "URI parameters".

Section 4.11 is redundant and should be removed. The filled out template
need not be a standalone document. (Also section 4.8.)

I find the formatting in 4.9. unfortunate, and would prefer something
like the following

   Christian Spanring <[email-masked]>
   Alexander Mayrhofer <[email-masked]>

In 4.7. I find this questionable

   Poorly authored 'geo' URI instances could contain whitespace and
   values with leading plus signs ("+"), which is not allowed according
   to the ABNF.  Clients SHOULD, however, try to dereference such URIs
   after removing such whitespace and plus signs.

Why disallow it and then require clients to accept them anyway? If the
characters in question continue to be disallowed, it should be
emphasized that they are invalid and malformed, not poorly authored.

I could not immediately locate how clients are to handle multiple crs
parameters. A similar problem may exist for using too many digits in,
say, latitude.

It appears the scheme registration does not state considerations for
internationalization, such as handling of non-ascii characters. This
needs to be added, if only by saying that only ascii is allowed even
in %xx sequences and that implementations must reject any such URIs
with no attempt at recovery.

(As an aside, it strikes me as bad practise to start a memo with a log
of changes).
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:[email-masked] · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Am Badedeich 7 · Telefon: +49(0)160/4415681 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
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