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- To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
- Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Partyin' like it's 1999
- From: Jeff Rafter <lists@jeffrafter.com>
- Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 10:15:09 -0800
- Cc: Eric Hanson <elh@cs.pdx.edu>
- In-reply-to: <20041029040017.A79613@aquameta.com>
- References: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE07206889@hq1.pcmail.ingr.com> <20041028210212.A27335@aquameta.com> <41819419.6000707@metalab.unc.edu> <20041029040017.A79613@aquameta.com>
- User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 (Windows/20040913)
>>Umm, RDDL?
>
> RDDL is great, and I think it would be a fundamental part of
> such an infrastructure. But I don't think it is or was ever
> intended to be a mechanism for third parties to associate
> resources with a datatype in a universal fashion. RDDL alone is
> a closed environment where resource associations are under the
> control of whoever owns the namespace. RDDL is authoritative,
> first party info -- but that's just part of the equation.
Clearly I am missing the problem here. It strikes me that you can do
exactly what you want to do with RDDL. If you are adding an extension to
an RSS document that is namespaced-- make sure you place an RDDL
document at the end of the namespace. If you are implementing someone
else's extension in your RSS document use their namespace (that points
to an RDDL document). At the end, the RDDL document will describe
plugins, rendering algorithms or what-have-you that can be employed by
many or by specific aggregators (e.g. a style sheet to present the feed
information in a customized fashion).
Then when Sally User subscribes to your feed in her favorite aggregator
it encounters a namespace it does not recognize *attempts* to resolve
the namespace hoping for something useful and finds the RDDL. Then it
finds that there is a stylesheet it could use to display your
extension-- prompts Sally to see if she really wants that and installs
and executes it.
I don't understand how this is fundamentally different than setting up a
name server for a DNS lookup-- apart from the propagation of the entry
throughout the distributed database. Regardless though I think the
distributed database is intended to solve a different problem-- I think
it is acceptable to have the RDDL entry maintained at one location-- if
it fails, then it is likely that the associated resources would fail.
The remaining problem is when I want to write a stylesheet for someone
else's namespace. How does one discover it? In this case I see what you
are driving at but would still shy away from a distributed database. It
seems like you might accomplish much of what you want simply by adding
in additional RDDL pointers:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";
xmlns:rddl="http://www.rddl.org";
rddl:see-also="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml
http://www.example.org/my-xhtml-extensions"/>
In any event I don't think I would want random people making assertions
about any namespace they want. I wouldn't want to load up my aggregator
and have 7000 popups for extensions/plugins to RSS... requiring it to be
embedded in the document at least gives you a source for any malicious
plugins. For more broad range applications the aggregator itself can
host a site for extensions (a la Firefox or Thunderbird).
Cheers,
Jeff Rafter
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