Re: I18N-ISSUE-65: find() method case sensitivity [Contacts API]

On 7/5/2011 8:47 AM, Dominique Hazael-Massieux wrote:
>
> Actually, I'm not sure that it should; the search parameter of the
> find() method is defined to be used as a hint that the user agent can
> use to pre-filter the list of contacts to the user.
>
> It is so much of a hint that the user agent could choose to ignore it if
> it can't make use of it (e.g. due to implementation restrictions), or it
> determines that it wouldn't make sense, etc.
>
>
I'm puzzled -- the contents of the filter field seems undefined 
(syntactically), with the only example being 'Bob'. There is a note that 
indicates that this field is to be interpreted by the contact list 
provider, but this seems sufficiently vague as to be useless. It isn't 
clear that I (as a web application author) can find out which 
implementation of a contact list provider is present. Without this 
information, I'm not going to be able to produce the correct form of the 
search filter string. [Compare this with browser implementations where 
they identify themselves carefully so that I can build/use (admittedly 
ugly) cross browser libraries. I realize that the goal of this work is 
to eliminate (in theory) the requirement for cross browser libraries, 
but that is why it is important to be clear on the syntax and semantics 
of external APIs]

In particular, would you expect "bob jones" as a filter to match "Bobby 
J Jones" (split into individual fields as appropriate)? How about 
"Jones's Greek Kabob House"? If you can't say, then I think that the 
specification has failed as every web author will have to implement 
their own filtering -- and it isn't clear that a web application can 
retrieve the entire contacts list anyway due to underlying provider 
constraints. Think about LDAP based address books (or are these out of 
scope?)

Confused in MA

Philip

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Philip Gladstone
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Received on Tuesday, 5 July 2011 18:41:16 UTC