Re: [web-annotation] avoid constraining HTTP

@iherman, the question is whether you want this to be a web-level 
thing, or something that allows implementations to take shortcuts that
 are not allowed per HTTP. 
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5023#section-4.4 (and actually all of 
the RFC) is a good blueprint: in the end it mostly documents the media
 type, and then says that anything that's allowed by HTTP is fair game
 and must be properly dealt with by clients (and i think this is what 
@fhirsch is asking for). that's how you become a part of the web. if 
you specifically allow implementers to take shortcuts that are not in 
line with the web, then you tightly couple implementations.
why would you want to assume that there even is such a thing as an 
"annotation server", and clients should be able to find out that they 
are talking to such a thing? why wouldn't publishers set up servers 
that happily serve AtomPub, annotations, LDP, and who knows what else,
 and all they would have to do is make sure that this is a 
well-behaving HTTP server serving those resources with the appropriate
 behavior? when you make special rules, you fragment the web, and that
 would be a sad thing to do.
developing a client really does not take that much effort. there are 
HTTP libraries in every conceivable language, and you use those parts 
that are meaningful to you, and handle them according to HTTP.
@tilgovi, without trying to start a philosophical debate here: a 
protocol as i use the term is a set of conventions that allows peers 
to interact to accomplish some goal. the single greatest aspect of the
 web is that everybody on the web speaks the same protocol, so i never
 need to care who i am talking to, as long as they are speaking HTTP. 
if a spec constrains HTTP and expects servers to always follow those 
non-HTTP rules, then clients start taking shortcuts, and then those 
clients will break when somebody wants to use a standard HTTP server 
to serve the protocol. you have then effectively partitioned the web, 
and i think you have already discovered that when you tried to come up
 with a way to "discover" that a server is a special annotation 
server.
all i can say is: don't do it. it's bad for the web, and bad for what 
you're trying to do.

-- 
GitHub Notif of comment by dret
See 
https://github.com/w3c/web-annotation/issues/51#issuecomment-119680793

Received on Wednesday, 8 July 2015 18:07:55 UTC