Re: Caching of Style sheets

At 12:59p 05/19/96, Clark Breyman wrote:
>Hakon Lie wrote:
>> UAs should try to cache style sheets as they cache HTML documents
>> today. Caching could be based on the URL of the style sheet, what are
>> the argument for introducing UUIDs?
>
>While my suggestion might be restated "Why don't we put a UUID in every
>web content object?", I thought it best to limit my suggestion to CSS
>as there is still the opportunity to influence the initial development
>of CSS enabled UA's.
>
>I agree that UA could cache style sheets as the cache HTML documents,
>however URLs are not adequate as keys for caching. They indicate nothing
>about the version of the content identified, whether it was copied for
>somewhere else, etc. Think about the whole site replication issue -
>something a URL based caching scheme could deal with, but a UUID caching
>scheme could. In addition, my guess is that style sheets will become
>reusable licensable elements like Java applets. A UUID-keyed caching
>scheme would allow an author to publish a style sheet, multiple sites to
>use it and the UA to recogize that reuse.

How would you then handle this situation:

  * Author of published stylesheet modifies it.
  * Subscriber A wants any updates automatically.
  * Subscriber B want to stick with original.

What do you do about the ID conflicts which will ensue? Do you assign a new
ID every time the stylesheet is updated? Looks like a nightmare to me. A
URL-based scheme would avoid conflicts -- just point to whichever
stylesheet version you want. Version 1.0 is at URL x, version 1.1 is at URL
y.

__________________________________________________________________________
    Walter Ian Kaye <boo@best.com>     Programmer - Excel, AppleScript,
          Mountain View, CA                         ProTERM, FoxPro, HTML
 http://www.natural-innovations.com/     Musician - Guitarist, Songwriter

Received on Sunday, 19 May 1996 17:52:35 UTC