Re: Call for proposals to amend the "httpRange-14 resolution"

OK, we're halfway into the change proposal call period, and (unless
I've misunderstood or misremembered one of the submissions) no change
proposal of the sort we requested, i.e. that addresses TAG ISSUE-57
(performance and deployability of 303s), has been received.

I know criticisms of the baseline document, and suggestions for
expanding or restricting its scope, have come in, but these are not
nearly as interesting as solutions to the problem at hand. Once we
know where to go with ISSUE-57 the document can be crafted to fit.

If you intend to prepare something before the deadline I suggested
(March 29) I would appreciate some advance warning; because if no
proposals are going to be forthcoming, I will need to figure out what
the TAG should talk about at its F2F April 2-4, and what approach we
need to take to a problem that so many people *say* they care about,
but so few care about *enough* to be willing to participate in this
particular process.

Here are the kinds of proposals I was expecting that have not come in yet:
- those advancing the use of retrieval for delivering descriptions of
what the URI is supposed to refer to (i.e. proposals to use 200 where
303 has to be used now)
- those advancing non-200 alternatives to 303 that don't suffer its
performance and/or deployment problems, e.g. HTTP extensions or
/.well-known/meta/
- those advancing mixed 200/303 solutions

There is some interest in strengthening (restricting) the use of 200
beyond what httpRange-14(a) says, but doing so would only provide
additional motivation to solve ISSUE-57, it does not address the
problem.

I'm afraid this effort will founder for lack of involvement and
traction both within and outside of the TAG. If you think a different
process would work better, such as moving the work to a different
venue, I am interested to hear proposals of that sort also.

Thanks
Jonathan

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 10:57 AM, Jonathan A Rees <rees@mumble.net> wrote:
> Concerns regarding the efficiency of 303 redirects and the difficulty
> in deploying them on hosting services have been raised numerous times
> since the TAG proposed the 303 redirect as a way to use "hashless"
> URIs for semantic web and linked data purposes (i.e. beyond the
> purposes of the hypertext Web). The TAG now seeks input from the
> community in the form of proposals to amend the resolution in order to
> address these concerns. Proposals may give new discovery techniques,
> or take any other form that might help mitigate these problems.
>
> Please consult the following document for details of this call:
>
> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/uddp/change-proposal-call.html
>
> (I will be re-posting this call to the semantic web and linked data
> discussion lists in a few hours, after www-tag readers have pointed
> out any egregious errors, and after I have had a chance to resubscribe
> to the lists under my new email address, so that I have posting
> privileges.)
>
> Best
> Jonathan Rees

Received on Thursday, 15 March 2012 16:12:18 UTC