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The question of universal naming schemes for objects has been the
recipient of much attention in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18 (and elsewhere in JTC1,
too). Unfortunately, there is not universal agreement on what properties
a naming scheme should have, where it should be rooted, how should
manage it, or how a registration authority should be constituted. The
directory-distinguished names of X.500 and other messaging standards
have been cited as one potential model. However, other folks inthe
standards business, who have different sorts of things to name than
nodes on an electronic mail system, have felt that the X.500 scheme did
not meet their requirements. Among the people in SC18/WG8, those dealing
with type-font and character/glyph identification, in particular in
relationship to ISO 9541/ISO 10036 (Font and Glyph identification and
registration) and DIS 10180 (SPDL) have felt that X.500 is inadequate.
One response has been to revise ISO 9070 to be a generalized
registration/naming standard, rather than just something that applied to
"SGML Public Text". One problem in naming is that there is a tension
between the need for a universally understood scheme and the need for
individuals (like the creators of SGML documents) to be able to produce
identifiers without having to call some Registration Authority in Geneva
for a fully qualified structured name. The revised 9070 attempts to
accommodate both needs and further provides a means for mapping between
the sorts of Public Identifiers we have become accustomed to in SGML
with the Object Identifiers used in ASN.1

(This is not to say that 9070 is the final word in naming. I have often
observed that in discussions of naming two groups of standards
developers will wind up using the same vocabulary to talk about entirely
different subjects.)

James D. Mason
Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG8
masonjd@ornl.gov



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