W3C XPointer Schemes Registry

XPointer Scheme Name Registry Policy

This policy governs the registration of simple names for Scheme-Based XPointers.

Status of this document

Following Member review, this Registry was approved for public use by the Director in an announcement(member-only link) on 18 November 2005, under the terms of this policy.

Any substantive changes to this policy or other aspects of the operation of the Registry will be brought to the Membership for their approval.

1. Introduction

The XPointer Recommendation reserved all simple (unprefixed) XPointer scheme names to the W3C, but in the announcement of that Recommendation (Member-only link) the W3C Director said

[W]e expect to bring forward a proposal for discussion in the wider community and approval by the W3C membership which will enable open, public and well-regulated use of un-prefixed schemes.

This registry is the realization of that commitment. It provides for the easy determination of whether or not a name is already registered as a scheme name via http: HEAD or GET: Attempts to retrieve from the URI formed by concatenating http://www.w3.org/2005/04/xpointer-schemes/ with a name will succeed if the name has been registered as the name of an XPointer scheme and fail otherwise (see Status for more details).

2. Registration submission

Anyone can submit a registration request on a "first come, first served" basis, with results logged in the list of registered Scheme-Based Pointers.

Individuals must have a W3C Web account in order to complete the registration form. Anyone without on can either request a W3C Public Account, or, if they are an employee of a Member organization, a W3C Member Account (specify "XPointer Registry" as the purpose to request an account).

All that is required to submit a registration request is the name and a short description. The description does not need to complete, but should give enough information to make clear for what the scheme is designed. There is also a place for a URL for a detailed specification.

Note that, if a request is accepted by the registration form, it is still subject to review and may be rejected later, as specified in the following sections. Until it is either definitively accepted or rejected, it will have status pending.

3. Review process

3.1 Public notification

When a request to register a name is submitted, a message is sent to public-xpointer-registry@w3.org (archive).

3.2 Opportunity to object

Anyone who wishes to object to the proposed registration of the scheme name may do so by sending a message to the same list. The message subject should begin Formal objection: and should include arguments for rejecting or altering the proposed registration. Objections should be notified within two weeks of a request being announced on the list.

3.3 Addressing an objection

In the event of one or more objections being made, the Team Contact is responsible for deciding what to do. The Team Contact's decision will be announced on the mailing list, within two weeks of receipt of the objection.

If the objection is upheld, the name will continue in status pending for a further week, after which it will move to status rejected, unless the submission is revised (the same form as for registration can be used) or the submitter appeals to the W3C Director, by sending a letter with the subject APPEAL: rejection of [scheme name] to the mailing list.

In case of appeal, the Director has a month to reply to the mailing list. He may agree to the original registration request, or mandate its rejection, or delay his decision to a specified date. The original requester cannot reformulate his request, unless invited by the Director to do so.

3.4 Registration

If no objection is made, or the Director agrees to the registration, the Team Contact will accept the request and it changes to status registered. Notice of this will be sent to the mailing list.

Note: Registrations made by W3C Working Groups for schemes in conjunction with Working Drafts will stay in 'pending' status until the work reaches Proposed Recommendation status, at which point they will be eligible for registration on request by the WG concerned.

4. Status

Scheme names which have been submitted for registration have one of three possible statuses:

Registered
The scheme name has been registered and is available for use. Attempts to retrieve from the URI formed by concatenating http://www.w3.org/2005/04/xpointer-schemes/ with the scheme name will succeed. Attempts to register a scheme with that name will fail.
Pending
A request to register the scheme name has been received, but it has not yet been registered. Attempts to retrieve from the URI formed by concatenating http://www.w3.org/2005/04/xpointer-schemes/ with the scheme name will succeed with 303 See other. Attempts to register a scheme with that name will fail. Retrieval from http://www.w3.org/2005/04/xpointer-schemes/pending plus the scheme name (which is what the 303 response will redirect to) will succeed.
Rejected
One or more requests to register the scheme name have been received, but have been rejected. Attempts to retrieve from the URI formed by concatenating http://www.w3.org/2005/04/xpointer-schemes/ with the scheme name will fail with 404 Not Found. Attempts to register a scheme with that name will initiate the registration process.

5. Implementation details

The scheme registry is backed by a database, which records information about status, owner etc. for pending and registered schemes. The information in the database can be retrieved in either of two forms, HTML or RDF, via content negotiation. Use Accept: text/html to retrieve HTML, or Accept: application/rdf+xml to retrieve RDF.


Henry Thompson, XPointer registry contact

$Date: 2006/05/21 09:37:48 $