Assigning URIs to Resources

[אנטולי קרס נר <tombackton gmail com>]

Hello everybody,

I'm writing a desktop app using Gnome technologies, and I reached the
stage I started planning Semantic Desktop support.

After a lot of brainstorming, sketching ideas and models, writing notes
and reading a lot about RDF and related topics, I finally came up with a
plan draft.

The first thing I decided to do is to define the way I give URIs to
resources, and this is where I'd like to hear your advice.


My program consists of two parts:

1) On the lower level, an RDF schema is defined. It's a standard set of
classes and properties, possible extended by users who want more options
(using a definition language translated to RDF).

2) On the high level, the user defines resources using those classes and
properties.


There's no problem with the lower level, because the data model is
public: Even if a user decides to add new content, she's very welcome to
share it and make other people's apps have more features. The problem is
with the second part. In the higher level, the user defines tasks,
meetings, appointments, plans and schedules. These may be private, and
the user may prefer to to have any info in the URI revealing the source
of the information.


So here are the questions I have on my mind:

1) Which URI scheme should I use? I don't have a website or any web
pages, so using http doesn't make sense. It also doesn't seem to make
sense to use any other standard IANA-registered URI. I've been
considering two options: Use some custom, my own, URI scheme name for
public resources, and use a bare URN for private ones, something like
this:
urn : random_name_i_made_up : some_private_resource_uuid
But I was wondering whether a custom URI scheme is a good decision, I'm
open to hear ideas from you :)

2) How to hide the private resources? On one hand, it may be very useful
for the URI to tell where a task came from, especially when tasks are
shared and delegated between people. On the other hand, it doesn't
consider privacy. Then I was thinking, can I/should I use two different
URI styles depending on user settings? This would create some
inconsistency. I'm not sure what to do here, since I don't have any
experience with URIs. Hopefully you have some advice for me.


Thanks in advance!
Anatoly