Re: hash in WebID - cachability problem

On 12/2/12 12:25 PM, Henry Story wrote:
> On 2 Dec 2012, at 16:36, Kingsley Idehen<kidehen@openlinksw.com>  wrote:
>
>> >On 12/2/12 7:02 AM, Henry Story wrote:
>>> >>kidehen: neither Linked Data, WebID nor the AWWW are about Tabulator or any other product for that matter. There's no news about the challenges posed to the Tabulator extension and Firefox combo. That's too solution specific to be used as an argument about staying with AWWW and TAG findings re., standards that affect other Web-scale Linked Data endeavors.]
>> >
>> >The record, it should read:
>> >
>> >kidehen: neither Linked Data, WebID nor the AWWW are about Tabulator or any other product for that matter. There's no news about the challenges posed to the Tabulator extension and Firefox combo. That's too solution specific to be used as an argument*against*  staying with AWWW and TAG findings re., standards that affect other Web-scale Linked Data endeavors .
>> >
>> >I'll correct the Wiki doc.
> Thanks Kingsely. I do agree with you that the point you are responding to above has
> to be filled out in more detail.
>
> But now I wonder how that fits with  Ted Thibodeau's position on the KeyChain [1]. If
> I take your argument above and replace Tabulator by OSX Keychain bug
> ( as shown in this picturehttp://tinyurl.com/cpbpcqe   ) we get the following:
>
>> >  neither Linked Data, WebID nor the AWWW are about the KeyChain or any other product for that matter. There's no news about the challenges posed to clicking on the SAN of the Apple OSX Keychain. That's too solution specific to be used as an argument*against*  staying with IETF findings re., standards that affect other Web-scale Linked Data endeavors .
> Assuming that the clicking on the OSX keychain SAN URI is not more important than the Tabulator
> Project, as far as Linked Data goes, then it seems that your argument above (which I think is a good
> one - and which TimBL needs to address  in more detail than I was able to do) requires you
> to apply that argument back to your OSX keychain.
>
> Henry
>
>
> [1] seehttp://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/webid/wiki/WebID_Definition/hash#Arguments_Against_Proposal_1
> namely:
> [[
> Ted Thibodeau
>
> 	• The Keychain Access.app in Mac OS X takes any SAN that includes a #, and visually presents it correctly. But when you click on that URI (the textual string of which you cannot select and copy), your browser loads the URI with %23 in place of the # -- e.g., Keychain Access.app displayshttp://twitter.com/TallTed#this locally, but when I click it, my browser (observed with both Firefox and Safari; no reason to think any other would behave differently) tries to loadhttp://twitter.com/TallTed%23this  -- which correctly 404s. Now, this is clearly a bug in Mac OS X and/or Keychain Access.app -- but this is a very widely deployed tool which demonstrates the folly of forcing a particular URI pattern for WebID. (This is an argument against both MUST and SHOULD for hash-URI.)
> ]]
>
> Kingsley added a picture of this KeyChain
>   https://dl.dropbox.com/u/11096946/WebID/keychain-http-hash-versus-slash-uri-issue-interop-showcase.png
>
>

The problem: interoperability with what exists.

Tabulator: an extension for Firefox and Chrome browsers that enables 
Linked Data browsing and RWW based CRUD.

Keychain and Mac Mail: native Mac OS X applications used my Mac OS X 
users, by default.


Tabulator is used by a microscopic minority of end-users, if one seeks 
to be expansive about the Tabulator user profile.

Keychain and Mac Mail: used by majority of Mac OS X users.

Implications for hash based HTTP URIs:

Tabulator developers and users: good experience.

Keychain and Mac Mail users: bad experience due to the fact that both 
applications convert "#" to %23 when performing HTTP GET operations.

Solution: Don't use SHOULD in the definition of WebID to encourage 
developers to develop for hash based HTTP URIs. Instead, in line with 
TimBL's own Linked Data meme, use SHOULD for HTTP URIs.

Benefits:

1. Mac OS X users (a massive installed base) don't encounter confusing 
WebID experience when reading emails that have WebID's included in the 
body (e.g, a mail indicating one's WebID or where it is used to denote 
an entity), ditto when viewing and then clicking them via Keychain

2. Tabulator developers and users *might* have an inconvenience when 
they encounter hashless HTTP URIs, but they are a distinct minority user 
profile

3. Compatibility and consistency with the TimB's own Linked Data meme

4. Compatibility with TAG findings.

-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
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