5. We also need some kind of agreement on the json syntax and other new features.
My strategy is to just start defining stuff and implementing. If someone doesn't like the format, they're free to implement it differently. History has shown that adoption is the best form of "agreement". Let the market decide.
Folks - just wondering if there is any update in the alias syntax that you guys are adopting for the various browser extensions/add-ons, nxt clients, etc.
The worst outcome would be two or more conflicting approaches, with an alias definition working in one browser extension but not another. I could no longer give my 'notsoshifty' alias out to people with any confidence that it would be useful to him. Regardless of whether one approach eventually becomes dominant, the real losers would be the alias concept itself, and its (non-)users.
So I am keen for some consensus. No need for official sanctioning, but some peer review/discussion would probably be beneficial.
For instance, as an alias user I would like to be able to define an alias as any of:
- A simple standard URL, such as '
http://example.com'
- A simple nxt-specific URL that references a nxt account, such as 'acct:123456789'
- A nxt-specific URL that bundles a number of other URLs (ideas for formats as previously discussed)
And although the network doesn't insist upon it, c-f-b's idea that an alias should always reference a URL seems sound. So rather than '123456789' it should be 'acct:123456789' (or whatever).
As a side question: one important feature for nxt is the ability to send funds to a named alias rather than a number. I can see this being implemented in two ways:
1. Purely client side. The client looks up the alias to get the account ID, and then creates a transaction with that account (not alias) as the recipient
2. Within network/API. The client creates a transaction with the alias as the recipient, and the network (i.e. forging node, and other nodes through validation) translates the alias into an account id at time of forging
The second seems to me to be cleaner and preferred. Example: a transaction might take hours to get processed, and what's important is the account that the alias corresponds to at the time it gets processed, not when it is initially shoved into the network.
However, this would require API changes. And so any URI conventions that are adopted by browser extensions/addons would need to be adopted into the API.
