looking for terminology recommendations concerning non-rooted FQDNs

Fri Feb 22 18:39:21 UTC 2013

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joe Abley" <jabley at hopcount.ca>

> > In fact, Joe, I think it's distinguishing your second case from "a label
> > string which is intended to reference a rooted FQDN, but the user did not
> > specify the trailing dot -- and yet still does not want a search path
> > applied"...
> 
> That's the same as my second case.
> 
> "rooted FQDN" is also not well-defined outside this thread. I don't
> think just adopting the terminology unilaterally is going to make it
> so.

It isn't?

I knew what he meant immediately, without having to read the rest of
the sentence: an ascii represenation of a fully qualified hostname
with a period at the end.

> >> The terminology "root zone" or "root domain" to explain the trailing
> >> dot is misleading and unhelpful, I find.
> >
> > No, what's *really* unhelpful and misleading is the people who say
> > that it is the *dot* which specifies the name of the root,
> 
> The dot doesn't specify the name of the root. That's why it's
> confusing.

Oh: we're in violent agreement.  :-)

> > rather than the
> > null labelstring which *follows* that dot (which is what it actually
> > is, and I'll save everyone's stomach linings by not saying the words
> > "alternate root" here. :-)
> 
> There is no null label string following the dot in a fully-qualified
> domain name, in this context. You're confusing the presentation of
> domain names with wire-format encoding of domain names.

Well, alas, I think you have to unpack that last sentence at least one
more layer for me to be sure what I'm agreeing or disagreeing with...

but since the dot is a separator (I believe by definition), if it exists
at the end, it has to be separating *something*.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
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