RE: semantics of external members

At 03:25 PM 1/17/98 PST, Yaron Goland wrote:
>The purpose of the external member mechanism is to provide a place to record
>a set of URIs that are associated with a collection, that is it.

That's fine, very sensible decision, but could you or some other author
answer the questions?  I simply can't tell from reading the spec what the
semantics *are*.  The spec should be clear on the issues, otherwise people
will simply guess, and likely guess inconsistently.  If possible the spec
should say clearly what happens, if the matter is server-specific or
undefined, it should say that too.

To restate them, briefly:

1) can I do a PROPFIND on an external URI? (*)  Do the results depend in
any way on the collection that contains the external URI?
2) can I do a PROPPATCH?
3) Can I do a LOCK?
4) What are the semantics of GET or PUT on an external URI.

* by "do a PROPFIND" I mean if I do one, will I get back some useful
values, not just a 404 error.

Yours in confusion

Jim