Re: [chairs] your input on OASIS functionality enhancements

From
Matthew MacKenzie <>
Date
2004-01-09T19:48:07+00:00
ID
Thread
Re: [chairs] your input on OASIS functionality enhancements
Kark & Jeff:

Here is a hint to address the lame URL problem Norm brings up:

http://www.engelschall.com/pw/apache/rewriteguide/

You could setup rewrite rules for all of the committee directories so that a nice URL could be used in a predictable way.

Failing that, you can hobble something together using PHP, MySQL and Apache.

Another option is to have a new page added to Kavi that allows a chair/secretary to assign a URN to a document.  By assigning the URN, a PHP/Mysql script could provide a nice url, e.g. http://www.oasis-open.org/documents/urn:committee:type:doc:version

There.  You've no excuse :-)

___________________________

Matthew MacKenzie

Senior Architect

Intelligent Documents Business Unit

Adobe Systems Canada Inc.

http://www.adobe.com/

506 869.0175

On Jan 9, 2004, at 3:43 PM, Norman Walsh wrote:

/ "Karl F. Best" <> was heard to say:

| Last spring we rolled out the new collaborative tools from Kavi,

| including membership roster management, balloting, email lists,

| document repository, action items, etc.

I remain utterly unimpressed. I will not go so far as to say that I

think the new system is an unmitigated disaster, but it is, IMHO, just

barely usable.

The system is awkward, the website is cumbersome, and I think it has

made the OASIS site less useful not only to TC members but also to the

general public.

* There are parts chairs can't edit

* The list of documents presented to the public is still a flat

list lacking the hierarchy created by the chair or secretary

* There's no provision for navigation within the pages of the

of a single TC.

As I have said before, the most significant bug is that it is

impossible to publish documents with predictable URIs. I consider the

site unusable for publishing important documents until this bug is

fixed. (It works fine for meeting minutes and other things, but I

cannot reliably publish specifications, schemas, or other documents

that have internal URI references.)

For example, I just published a working draft of the XML Catalogs

specification for the Entity Resolution TC. The HTML version of that

specification includes URIs for the original XML sources and a PDF

version of the document.

While I can upload all three documents,I cannot make the links work

because I cannot predict what the URI for the XML or PDF versions will

be when I am generating the HTML.

And while we're talking about URIs, the URIs that Kavi creates really

suck:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/4952/wd-entity-xml-catalogs-1.0_2e.html

Granted, URIs are technically opaque, but that URI doesn't even give

me a hint about what committee created it.

I'd happily go back to the days when I could have published:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/specs/wd-entity-xml-catalogs-1.0_2e.html

Nevermind functionality *enhancements*, the system still has an

absolutely critical flaws.

Be seeing you,

norm

-- 

 / XML Standards Architect / Sun Microsystems, Inc.

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