Uniform access to descriptions

Dear all,

The issue of uniform access to metadata (or "descriptions", see wiki
page below) has resurfaced recently on the www-tag mailing list and
elsewhere.  In case this characterization doesn't ring a bell, this is
the problem that the revival of the Link: header is supposed to solve
- given a URI, obtain information about, or associated with, the
document / resource / thing.

At the risk of delaying progress I think it's worthwhile to verify
that we have the right solution, and to consider benefits (and costs)
of possible improvements.  We may never get another chance to get this
right.

I have done some research to locate as many interested parties as
possible, and now invite you all to discuss this issue on the
www-tag@w3.org mailing list.  Information about subscribing is at [2].
Subscribing is probably a more reliable way to participate than
inclusion in a cc: , but if you prefer to participate without
subscribing we'll do our best to include you.

At Dan Connolly's suggestion I would like to start by collecting use
cases, which I volunteer to collate, and use them to drive discussion
of exactly what form the solution should take and what process should
be used to standardize it.  So please send your uses cases to www-tag.

I have started gathering materials on this topic on a wiki page [3],
which you are invited to browse.  This is a followon to a similar page
started by TimBL [4].

I'm happy to do what I can to coordinate the effort and drive it to a
speedy conclusion.

Best
Jonathan Rees
Science Commons and TAG

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2008Feb/0013.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/Mail/Request
[3] http://esw.w3.org/topic/FindingResourceDescriptions
[4] http://esw.w3.org/topic/LinkHeader

Bcc:
   Stuart Williams, TAG
   Jonathan Rees, TAG
   Tim Berners-Lee, TAG
   Dan Connolly, TAG, HTML5
   Ian Hickson, HTML5
   Harry Haplin, GRDDL
   Phil Archer, POWDER
   Sean Palmer
   Jonathan Borden
   Mark Nottingham, HTTP WG
   Ed Davies
   Mikael Nilson
   Ian Davis
   Patrick Stickler
   Graham Klyne
   Alan Ruttenberg

Received on Wednesday, 5 March 2008 12:34:58 UTC