comments on draft-hopmann-collection-props-00.txt

Alex, some comments on your internet draft, organized by the section
number.  Some of these are clarifying questions, some are just
glitches, and are substantive.

section 2, paragraph three, says
   This document follows the same collections as the WebDAV protocol 
   specification [1] for defining these properties. 

The word 'collections' should be 'conventions'

The subsections within this section are numbered from 1.2 but should
be from 2.1

1.2  childcount

Does this include hidden?  The definition should explicitly say it does. 

I am puzzled by the three 'count' properties.
you have 
 childcount == count all children
 objectcount == count all children that are not folders
 visiblecount == count all children that are not folders or hidden

The count of folders is childcount - objectcount, right?


right?

One criticism I have of all these countings is that it seems hard to
generalize.  Likewise, there are some things one can't count, such as 
the number of non-hidden objects of any type. 

Would it perhaps be better to define a generalized "partition" of the
collection members, so you could slice it up in multiple, nested ways?

Here's a sketch of how to do that

<!ELEMENT division count name? partition*) >
<!ELEMENT partition division+?>
<!ELEMENT count PCDATA>
<!ELEMENT name PCDATA>

A division has a count, an optional name, and an optional set of
partitions.  Here, a name is just a string.  (You might prefer it to
be a propertyname or even a (boolean valued) expression.  I don't
care.)

The name is intended to serve the same purpose as the
isstructuredocument property, it's a hint to the UI about how to
display the thing.

Simple example.  A collection with 17 members, of which 12 are
folders, and the rest are something else

<division>
 <count>17</count>
 <partition>
   <division>
     <count>12</count>
     <name>folder</name>
   </division>
   <division>
     <count>5</count>
   </division>
 <partition>
</division>

Since the sum of counts of the divisions of a partition must sum to
the count of the containing division, the final (none of the above)
division may be omitted, so we can write the above as

<division>
 <count>17</count>
 <partition>
   <division>
     <count>12</count>
     <name>folder</name>
   </division>
 <partition>
</division>

Same collection, with 17 members.  The 12 folders are further
partitioned into 5 'special' folders, 2 'reserved' folders, and the
remaining five are just 'generic' folders.

<division>
 <count>17</count>
 <partition>
   <division>
     <count>12</count>
     <name>folder</name>
     <partition>
       <division>
         <count>5</count>
         <name>special</name>
       </division>       
       <division>
         <count>2</count>
         <name>reserved</name>
       </division>       
     </partition>
   </division>
 <partition>
</division>


Same as above, with two alternate partitions of the seventeen
members.  The first one is based on the folder/non-folder distinction,
the second on the hidden/non-hidden distinction.
<division>
 <count>17</count>
 <partition>
   <division>
     <count>12</count>
     <name>folder</name>
     <partition>
       <division>
         <count>5</count>
         <name>special</name>
       </division>       
       <division>
         <count>2</count>
         <name>reserved</name>
       </division>       
     </partition>
   </division>
 <partition>
 <partition>
   <division>
     <count>2</count>
     <name>hidden</name>
   </division>
 <partition>
</division>

 You could also express this with only one top level partition
(folder/non folder) where each of its two divisions was then divided
by hidden/non-hidden.
   

1.3 defaultdocument 

Is this supposed to define what GET on a collection returns?  If so it
should say so.

Must the resource identified by defaultdocument be an (immediate)
member of the collection?

1.4 id 

Would a weak etag suffice for this purpose?

If a resource is copied (not moved) must the copy have a different id?
If so, then how do you MOVE, sinnce MOVE is COPY plus DELETE.  And
likewise, how could I use the id for replication?  On the other hand,
if a copy kept the id, then if you edited one copy and not the other,
you'd have two different resources, with the same ID but  different
contents.  On the other hand, since you don't change the ID when you
edit the resource, this could happen anyway (given a caching proxy)

1.5 isfolder

The DTD for this item defines ishidden not isfolder

Why can't you make this a "subtype" of the DAV:resourcetype property?

<collection></folder></collection>

1.6 ishidden

The text Description says "If this property is absent, the collection
is not hidden." the word "collection" should be "resource"


1.7 isstructureddocument

Why not use dav:resourcetype for this?

<collection><structured/></collection?

The Purpose referers to the "iscollection" property, which is
undefined.

(typo) missing a newline before the Definition

1.8 hassubs

would be better named "hassubfolders"

1.9 nosubs

Perhaps a better name is "contraception" or "sterile" since the
meaning is that one can't create any more children.  Hmm, that's a bad
plan, it would make the republicans not want to fund WebDAV.  Okay,
how about instead "nocreatechildren"? or even "dontmkcol".

Otherwise it's too easy for people to confuse this with meaning "this
collection has no subfolders"

1.10 objectcount

does this count hidden items?

1.11 reserved

Could a plain (non collection) resource also be reserved?

Can one do a PROPPATCH on a reserved collection?  Can one do an
ORDERPATCH (from the Advanced Collection Resources draft)

Would a printer queue be a good example of reserved?

1.12 visiblecount

The definition DTD is for 'reserved' not 'visiblecount'

I'd like to suggest an additional property, "ispaged".  If this
property is true of a collection it means there is a one to one
correspondance between the children of the collection and the 'pages'
of a document.  So for instance, if you scanned a document into a
collection of TIFF files, that collection would have the ispaged set.
Or if you saved a powerpoint file into HTML, creating one HTML
resource for each slide, that would also be paged.

If the collection is ordered, as in ACR, then the collection ordering
corresponds to the page ordering.

best regards

Jim Davis

Received on Thursday, 21 January 1999 21:23:01 UTC