[Ndn-interest] any comments on naming convention?

[Massimo Gallo]

On 17/09/2014 14:56, Mark Stapp wrote:
> ah, thanks - that's helpful. I thought you were saying "I like the 
> existing NDN UTF8 'convention'." I'm still not sure I understand what 
> you _do_ prefer, though. it sounds like you're describing an entirely 
> different scheme where the info that describes the name-components is 
> ... someplace other than _in_ the name-components. is that correct? 
> when you say "field separator", what do you mean (since that's not a 
> "TL" from a TLV)?
Correct.
In particular, with our name encoding, a TLV indicates the name 
hierarchy with offsets in the name and other TLV(s) indicates the offset 
to use in order to retrieve special components.
As for the field separator, it is something like "/". Aliasing is 
avoided as you do not rely on field separators to parse the name; you 
use the "offset TLV " to do that.

So now, it may be an aesthetic question but:

if you do not need the entire hierarchal structure (suppose you only 
want the first x components) you can directly have it using the offsets. 
With the Nested TLV structure you have to iteratively parse the first 
x-1 components. With the offset structure you cane directly access to 
the firs x components.

Max

>
> -- Mark
>
> On 9/17/14 6:02 AM, Massimo Gallo wrote:
>> The why is simple:
>>
>> You use a lot of "generic component type" and very few "specific
>> component type". You are imposing types for every component in order to
>> handle few exceptions (segmentation, etc..). You create a rule (specify
>> the component's type ) to handle exceptions!
>>
>> I would prefer not to have typed components. Instead I would prefer to
>> have the name as simple sequence bytes with a field separator. Then,
>> outside the name, if you have some components that could be used at
>> network layer (e.g. a TLV field), you simply need something that
>> indicates which is the offset allowing you to retrieve the version,
>> segment, etc in the name...
>>
>>
>> Max
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 16/09/2014 20:33, Mark Stapp wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 9/16/14 10:29 AM, Massimo Gallo wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I think we agree on the small number of "component types".
>>>> However, if you have a small number of types, you will end up with 
>>>> names
>>>> containing many generic components types and few specific components
>>>> types. Due to the fact that the component type specification is an
>>>> exception in the name, I would prefer something that specify 
>>>> component's
>>>> type only when needed (something like UTF8 conventions but that
>>>> applications MUST use).
>>>>
>>>
>>> so ... I can't quite follow that. the thread has had some explanation
>>> about why the UTF8 requirement has problems (with aliasing, e.g.) and
>>> there's been email trying to explain that applications don't have to
>>> use types if they don't need to. your email sounds like "I prefer the
>>> UTF8 convention", but it doesn't say why you have that preference in
>>> the face of the points about the problems. can you say why it is that
>>> you express a preference for the "convention" with problems ?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Mark
>>>
>>
>> .
>>
>
>