RFC 3541

RFC 3541: A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for the Web3D Consortium (Web3D) 🎀

okay bestie, here's the tea ☕. This is RFC 3541, written by A. Walsh (that's Aaron E. Walsh) for the Web3D Consortium. It's Category: Informational and dated May 2003. The title block has no Obsoletes or Updates line, so it doesn't obsolete or update anything. 💅

Status of this Memo 📜

This memo gives information to the Internet community. It doesn't specify an Internet standard of any kind, and distribution of it is unlimited. 🌸

Copyright Notice ⚖️

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved. 🫶

Abstract ✨

okay so this doc describes a URN namespace for the Web3D Consortium. It's meant for naming persistent resources like technical documents and specifications, VRML and X3D files and resources, XML DTDs, XML Schemas, namespaces, style sheets, media assets, and other stuff Web3D makes or manages. It's giving organized, forever-named files 🦋💖

1. Introduction 🧚

Web3D is a non-profit with a mission to build and promote open standards that bring 3D to the Internet, the Web, and broadcast apps. It's in charge of developing, advancing, and maintaining the VRML97 ISO/IEC International Standard (ISO/IEC 14772-1:1997), plus X3D (the upcoming official successor to VRML) and related tech. 🌈

Web3D keeps its standards work going through dedicated Working Groups, Task Groups, and professional Liaisons to related standards bodies like ISO, W3C, and MPEG. Check http://web3d.org/ for the full deets.

Web3D wants to hand out unique, permanent, location-independent names based on URNs for some of the resources it makes or manages. 💜

This namespace spec is for a formal namespace. 👑

2. Specification Template 🎀

Namespace ID

web3d

Registration Information

Registration Version Number: 1
Registration Date: 2003-05-06

Declared registrant of the namespace

Web3D Consortium, Inc.
Email: <contact@web3d.org>
Web: <http://web3d.org>

 c/o
   Name       : Aaron E. Walsh
   Affiliation: Web3D Working Group Chair; Web3D Liaison to MPEG, W3C
   Address    : 18 Haviland Street, Boston, MA USA 02115
   Phone      : +1 (617) 536-3279
   Email      : <aaron@mantiscorp.com>
   Web        : <http://mantiscorp.com/people/aew/>

Declaration of syntactic structure

URNs assigned by Web3D will have this hierarchical structure, based on the group's organizational setup:

urn:web3d:{subgroup}:{subgroup-specific string}

"subgroup" is an official Web3D subgroup or activity, like the VRML standard (vrml97), Extensible 3D (x3d), the Universal Media Working Group (media), the Geographical VRML Working Group (geovrml), the Humanoid Animation Working Group (hanim), and so on. "subgroup-specific string" is a US-ASCII string that follows the URN Syntax requirements ([RFC2141]). 🦋

When ownership or management of a resource is shared by several Web3D subgroups or activities, a general category can be used in place of a specific subgroup. 🌸

Chairs of Web3D subgroups and activities assign all unique identifiers that fall within the scope of the subgroup or activity they chair. They're also the ones responsible for publishing the specific structure of URNs their group or activity assigns. 👑

Relevant ancillary documentation

None. 🙈

Identifier uniqueness considerations

Identifier uniqueness gets enforced by the Web3D Board of Directors (BoD), working with the Chair(s) of the corresponding Web3D subgroups. 🔥

Identifier persistence considerations

Web3D is committed to keeping every resource that's officially assigned a URN by the organization accessible and persistent. Forever is the goal 🫶💖

Process of identifier assignment

Assignment is limited to the owner and any authorities the owner specifically designates. Web3D may designate parts of its namespace for assignment by other parties. 🧚

Process of identifier resolution

The owner will develop and maintain "URN catalogs" that map all assigned URNs to Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), specifically so Web-based resolution of named resources works. Down the road, an interactive online resolution system might be built to automate this. ✨

The owner will also authorize additional resolution services as appropriate. 💅

Rules for Lexical Equivalence

URNs are lexically equivalent if they're lexically identical. 🎀

Conformance with URN Syntax

No special considerations. 🌈

Validation mechanism

None specified. The owner will develop and maintain URN catalogs. If a URN is in a catalog, that means it's valid. 🍓

Scope

Global 🌍

3. Examples 🍓

The following examples are not guaranteed to be real. They're here for teaching purposes only, bestie 🙈

urn:web3d:vrml97:node:GeoCoordinate
urn:web3d:vrml97:node:NurbsCurve
urn:web3d:x3d:schemas:2002:compact
urn:web3d:x3d:schemas:2002:compromise
urn:web3d:media:textures:nature:grass

4. Security Considerations 💀

Real talk, this one's serious. There are no security considerations beyond the ones that normally come with using and resolving URNs in general. Still, please keep your guard up 🔐🔥

5. Namespace Considerations and Community Considerations 👑

The Web3D Consortium (formerly "VRML Consortium") has long recognized how valuable and useful URNs are, going back to the VRML International Standard issued in 1997 (ISO/IEC 14772-1:1997, commonly known as "VRML97"). Annex F.2, "URNs", of that standard describes non-normative use of URNs as a persistent naming mechanism for referenced resources like files, EXTERNPROTOs, textures, and more. 🌸✨

So a bunch of VRML players and authoring tools, plus content authoring communities, have adopted Web3D-style URNs for this purpose. That's happening even though the Web3D Consortium never set up a formal "web3d" URN NID. The result is that resources named under these different naming conventions are hard to make interoperable, if not impossible, because there's no single, well-defined "web3d" URN namespace that's formally registered and maintained by the Web3D Consortium. It's giving chaos 😭

To promote complete compatibility and interoperability across past, current, and future Web3D standards, along with Web3D-related products, tools, and content, the Web3D Consortium believes formal registration and management of the "web3d" URN namespace is necessary. It's in the best interest of the wider Internet and Web communities it serves. 💜

The "web3d" URN namespace will be used to name VRML and X3D files and resources, XML DTDs and Schemas, namespaces, style sheets, media assets, and other resources produced or managed by Web3D. As an open standards organization, any Web3D Consortium resources officially named using the "web3d" namespace will be made freely available to the public. 🌈🫶

Resources will be named and maintained according to the process(es) described in this document. Any organization or individual can use the Web3D Consortium's freely available URN catalogs to resolve a resource named in them. The Consortium controls naming and allocation of resources so everything stays compliant with the process(es) described here, but resolving and using these resources is unrestricted and free of charge, to encourage widespread adoption of open Web3D technologies. Related documentation and open source resolvers will be freely provided through the Consortium's website. 🎀

Member organizations or individuals who want to name their own resources using the "web3d" namespace can submit those requests directly to the corresponding Web3D Working Group (subgroup) for review. 🧚

6. IANA Considerations 🦋

This document describes a "web3d" URN NID registration for the Web3D Consortium. It's been entered into the IANA registry of URN NIDs at http://www.iana.org/assignments/urn-namespaces. 🌟

References 📚

[RFC2141] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.

Author's Address 🫶

Aaron E. Walsh
Mantis Development Corp.
18 Haviland Street
Boston, MA USA 02115

Phone: +1 (617) 536-3279
EMail: aaron@mantiscorp.com
Web  : <http://mantiscorp.com/people/aew/>

Full Copyright Statement ⚖️

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.

This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English.

The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assignees.

This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Acknowledgement 🌈

Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. 💖