RE: Resource Gloss (Human Readable)

[Charles Reitzel <creitzel@mediaone.net>]

At 10:18 AM 1/4/01 -0800, Tim Bray wrote:
>At 09:37 AM 04/01/01 -0500, Charles Reitzel wrote:
>>1) RDDL looks good, but it directly competes w/ the existing OASIS work
>>without offering any significant additional benefit.  
>
>The OASIS stuff I know about is entity-catalogue stuff, which seems
>like a different space.  Can you educate us with a couple of pointers?

I got 'em from Simon in this thread.  Try
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/.  Not it's not just about NS
URIs, but the thrust of the thread is that many people would like to
associate a NS URI w/ an entity of one kind or another and be able to get it
online.  My understanding is that John Cowan's XML Catalog was done as part
of this OASIS effort.  If you read John's link
(http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/XML/XCatalog.html) you'll notice that it
contains essentially the same data as RDDL (great minds think alike, all
kidding aside).  The difference, I think, is that it treats human readable
documents as "just another associated resource".

Let me put it to you, what is the compelling benefit of RDDL over XML
Catalog that justifies a separate standards effort?


>>2) I don't think you can force anything down anyone's throats on this
>>matter.  The NS spec is clear.
>
>Agreed, but anything that purports to document a namespace should
>not try and skip documenting it for humans, who at this point in
>history are still the main consumers of such information.

Which is on its way to becoming a self-fulfilling prohpecy...


>>3) There appears to be grudging consensus that you shouldn't URL format
>>(i.e. protocol identifier prefixes, host and domain, plus a file spec) as a
>>namespace URI unless it actually works.  
>
>I'm not sure I agree that there's consensus on this, but I think
>the problem is harder because there is *no* consensus as to 
>what kind of thing dereferencing the URL should get.  Thus
>the recent flurry of proposals.
>
>>Perhaps someone can point me to a good grammar for URL interpretation.  
>
>I assume you've read the RFCs?  Nobody would say they're perfect,
>but they have lots of crystal-clear grammar productions.  -Tim

Like I'm saying.  There's simply no good reason for not devising a simple
"ok to fetch it" rule for NS URIs.  What you do with it once you get it is a
different matter.  IMHO, that question should be delegated to sub-specs,
such as XSchema, SOAP, etc.

take it easy,
Charles Reitzel

P.S. Thanks to Simon for the links