[tdwg-guid] Embedding LSID links within Publications

Richard Pyle deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
Fri Nov 30 19:12:59 CET 2007


Hi Ricardo,

Thanks for chiming in!

> That's one way, yes. But recommendations 34 and 35 
> on section 10.1 and 10.2 of the LSID Applicability 
> Statement describe a more standard way of representing 
> LSIDs as clickable links. In short, the document 
> recommends that you use the LSID in its pure form as 
> the link text and the proxy version as the link URL. 
> Below are the link to the document and the text of 
> recommendation #34:

Yes, this is exactly what I had planned to do for the five ZooBank LSIDs, as
per the guidelines (sorry I wasn't more explicit about this).  I was mostly
concerned with how to establish the proxy itself -- i.e., whether to use the
TDWG Proxy or build one on the same domain as the authority part of the LSID
(which seems to me a more stable alternative, given that authority & domain
are more likely live or die together -- thereby effectively having one
opportunity to fail, instead of two -- or perhaps more correctly, 1.2
opportunites to fail, instead of two, given that it's possible for a proxy
to break without the LSID resolver breaking, and vice versa). I also planned
to include the little LSID icon with a link to an explanation of LSIDs, as
per recommendations.

However, your comment leads me to another set of questions I wanted to ask
this group, which I'll pose in a separate email. 

> No problem. You can use any HTTP proxy you want. The 
> key is that the LSID must remain associated with your 
> fine objects forever regardless of whether the proxy 
> (or HTTP) will be around or not.

Agreed -- and this is part of my response to Chuck (which, again, I'll send
under a seprate email).
	
> If you want to set up your own LSID HTTP proxy, let me know, I can help
you.

Yes!  Thank you!  I'll be in touch with you on this in a couple weeks.
	
> That's another problem that I think is related to Greg 
> Riccardi's requirements for LSID citation text and links, 
> and that is still open. Maybe we should address that issue 
> in another thread...

No problem -- as long as we come up with an answer in the next two weeks
that will stand as the right answer for the next 250 years, then I'll be
happy! 

:-)

> I would just advise you to code your proxy so that question 
> marks (?) and equal signs (=) are not needed. The parameter 
> name "lsid" is also redundant, so it could be omitted. In 
> other words, you should code your proxy to resolve LSIDs 
> using URLs as in the example below:
>	
>	http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:1234
>	
> That can be accomplished by some tricks on your 
> resolver script and web server.

This is one of the things I'll need your help with (keeping in mind that I'm
not a real web developer -- I only pretend to be one so I can pay the
mortgage).

Many thanks again for your input, and offer to help on developing the proxy.

Rich





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