- From: Michiel de Jong <michiel@unhosted.org>
- Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:12:23 +0200
- To: Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
- Cc: public-opentag@w3.org
On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote: > unsure what the * is here ... it comes from C syntax (*ptr) to dereference a pointer, and the problems arising from its absence in web architecture were mentioned here: http://www.jenitennison.com/blog/node/168 >> M3- as the user herself is not "on" the web, simply don't refer to it. >> refer instead to her interfaces (e.g. her email address) and documents >> about her (e.g. her webfinger profile) > > > something like mailto:user@host, you mean? this is a URI, also find as long as you don't use the URI mailto:user@host to mean anything else than the user's email address. I mean, don't use it to sometimes mean the email address and sometimes mean the user herself. Humans can deal with such impreciseness in natural language, but in a machine-readable language that's a bug. >> M4- the w3c way (this is a bit complicated and inconsistent, but i'll >> explain it below) > > > fine also no, it's ambiguous which means it can never be a machine-readable language. I'm not proposing this one, just listing it here for completeness. >> I think when we ask a user to identify themselves, it should always be >> done in way H1. If we ask a user to identify another user, it can be >> done in way H1 or H2. If we want to display a reference to a user, >> then it can be done with (a combination of) H1 and H2. > > > ok ... this is a UI choice ... seems reasonable ... are you suggesting that > your UI choice is the only one that should be allowed across the whole web? no, sorry, this is indeed more description of common practice. >> I when referring to a user in a machine-readable document, the obvious >> way to do it would be M1, M2 or M3. A machine can treat an email >> address as if it were just a magical thing. A human is probably >> incapable of thinking about an email address without thinking about >> the user behind it, so that's why i put M3 only under the >> machine-readable options and not under the human-readable ones. > > > if you mean a URI then yes, it's a good idea M3 is a URI, M1 and M2 are URIs with a * behind them. >> The w3c way is a variation on M3, with the following modifications: >> - instead of saying that when we say mailto:user@host we are talking >> about an email address, we have to interpret the context. If an email >> address fits into the context, then it refers to the email address. if >> a user fits in the context, then it refers to the user owning the >> email address. If both would fit then it breaks. (this can happen for >> instance if you talk about the colour of a building. you might be >> talking about the colour of the web page that describes the building. > > > it's using a URI but not always mailto: ... are you saying you'd like > mailto: to be the only URI scheme used to identify a user? no, mailto:, xmpp:, tel:, etcetera. any 'interface'. >> instead of: >> user == 'mailto:user@host*' >> >> we say: >> userContactMethods == ['mailto:user@host'] >> and: >> userDescriptions == ['http://host/~user/foaf.json#me'] > > how your system scales is a function of how you name things. I agree with your point in isolation, but how is it relevant here? Which one of the two is the scalable one? All i'm saying is that unlike in natural language, in machine-readable language we should be strict, and when we mention an email address we should call it an email address. So the first option is a bug, and the second one is correct.
Received on Thursday, 26 April 2012 12:12:59 UTC