Petname Language

Many different cryptographic identifiers get a petname, but the primary one of thought and concern is petnames for Zooko identifiers.

A Zooko identifier arrives as display name, nickname, public key, and signature binding the display name and nickname to the public key.

A petname for a Zooko name is derived from the nickname:

• remove all leading and trailing whitespace.
• If there are no alphabetic characters, prefix it with one at random.
• Move any leading characters that are not alphabetic from prefix to affix.
• Replace all whitespaces with hyphens.
• Replace all special characters with their nearest permitted equivalent.
  "#%&’(),.:;<=>?@[]\^{|} ~` are special characters that allow escape from plain text. In displayed text, @ will signify a petname corresponding to a Zooko name.
  If someone’s nickname is Bob, he will likely get the petname Bob, which will be displayed in text as @Bob, indicating it is likely to be translated in transmission and reception.
• If the result is a duplicate of an existing petname, append a number that renders it unique.
• The user gets the opportunity to revise the petname, but his petname has to be a valid identifier that conforms to the above rules, or else it gets revised again.
• The user may know that several petnames correspond to one entity, but he cannot assign several nicknames to one petname.

We will also eventually have local ids for receive addresses.

 reaction.la gpg key 154588427F2709CD9D7146B01C99BB982002C39F
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