Copy-edit use case JSON strawman (was: Re: Bodies resource from Benjamin)

Changed the subject line as we're way off the map at this point. :)

On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 1:06 PM, Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org> wrote:

> Hi, Benjamin–
>
> I realize that you were probably just putting out a strawman for
> discussion, and that you were probably making a different point, but since
> you are talking in code, I thought it would be useful to make a specific
> point about your code.
>

Right. The strawman actually had nothing to do with any copy-editing use
case--outside of that's the use case that started the multi-bodies
discussion to begin with...so I took a crack at it. ;)


>
> Just a high-level response, inline…
>
> On 9/1/15 11:40 AM, Benjamin Young wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 11:21 AM, Robert Sandersonwrote:
>>
>>
>>         Where this is trending now in my head is that we *keep*
>>         motivation on the annotation, but create classes for bodies.
>>         What this *might* look like in JSON-LD is something like:
>>
>>         ```
>>         {
>>            "type": "Annotation"
>>            "motivation": "editing",
>>            "bodies": {
>>              "tags": ["correction", "typo"],
>>              "comment": "wow...I should learn to type...",
>>              "edit": {
>>                "original": "itinirary",
>>                "replacement": "itinerary"
>>              },
>>
>
> This should not be necessary, under any of the proposals we'd been
> considering thus far.
>

Given this singular scenario (in which I did, unfortunately leave out the
TextQuoteSelector...or a TextPositionSelector...) your proposal almost
works.

More below...


>
> My immediate reaction was (I think) similar to Rob's:
>
>     * A pattern for extension that doesn't involve subProperties is what
>>     we have now.
>>
>
> If I'm reading Rob correctly, this means that none of the bodies (or
> targets) should have special sub-properties (or sub-structures) of the same
> type (e.g. motives/motivations/roles) that require special parsing or
> processing.
>
> (Note that Target does have Selectors each with idiosyncratic properties,
> but in this case, I think it's unavoidable and they are clearly defined.)
>
>
> Without making any judgment for or against other aspects of your strawman,
> and keeping everything else the same to isolate this single point for
> discussion, here's how I'd reformulate your strawman:
>
>  ```
>  {
>     "type": "Annotation"
>     "motivation": "editing",
>     "bodies": {
>       "tags": ["correction", "typo"],
>       "comment": "wow...I should learn to type...",
>       "edit": "itinerary",
>       "related": ["http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/itinerary"]
>     },
>     "target": "http://example.com/doc1"
>     "target": {
>       "source": "http://example.com/doc1",
>       "selector": {
>         "type": "oa:TextQuoteSelector",
>         "exact": "itinirary"
>       }
>     }
>  }
>  ```


> Yes, it's slightly longer. But has the same functionality, and it avoids
> two crucial problems:
>
> 1) the needless duplication of information;
> 1a) you'd need a TextQuoteSelector in the target anyway to correctly
> anchor the selection;
> 1b) mechanisms that duplicate information in multiple places are prone to
> getting out of sync and causing problems;


It's only "needless duplication" if you don't have more than one selector.

Given that you can have more than one selector (even of the same type...as
with any of these constructs), there's no way to tie the edit to the
selector without making them both resources (giving them URLs or assigning
them a blank node identifier).


>
> 2) the need for idiosyncratic and potentially unpredictable additional
> structures or properties within a known type of property
> 2a) this makes processing more difficult even for known structures of this
> type
> 2b) introducing such a structure into an extension point sets a pattern
> that makes graceful degradation very difficult
>

FWIW, this "edit" object would likely be pretty far out of scope for our
charter, and left up to implementors or other specs and working groups.

It would certainly make use of the selector system where possible, but it
would also have a requirement to survive the changing of the document and
still be a representative "edit"--so, at the very least, the "edit" and the
"selection" would have to be expressly related.


>
>  And, again, it's not necessary. I think it's useful for use to talk about
> these edge cases (and central use cases) because it helps us validate that
> our design is practical and versatile. In this case, you wrote some
> strawman code that might well have been done by a developer unfamiliar with
> the data model's design principles, and we were easily able to reformulate
> it into something that easily avoids the problems.
>

Almost. ;)


>
> This tells me 2 things:
>
> 1) the data model is strong and flexible;
>
> 2) we need to be really clear about how the model works, in terms the
> average developer can understand, and show explicitly how to add extensions
> (where they can be added, and how they should be structured); we can
> provide examples to make it clearer (like Rob's  “antecedent” and
> “subsequent” motives).
>
>
>
>
> On a related topic (which I'm putting here just to capture it)…
> Note that this my formulation has a somewhat interesting side effect.
> Since the TextQuoteSelector doesn't have a "prefix" or "suffix", it's
> ambiguous which instance of the "exact" quote value "itinirary" it's
> referring to, if there was more than one misspelling in the same document.
> Is it the first instance? The last instance? All instances? Is this a hack
> for spellcheck, or an abuse of the data model? Should this be expressed as
> multiple targets? Or should we define some "all instances" property? Or
> should we require a "prefix" and/or "suffix"? Is the Data Model the right
> place to define UA behavior for resolving selectors? Or should there be
> another spec, perhaps something that defines UA behavior for selectors in
> terms of RangeFinder and other APIs?
>

Given the reading of 4.2.2:
http://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-model/#h5_text-quote-selector
"This Selector describes a range of text by copying it, and including some
range of text immediately before and after it to distinguish between
multiple copies of the same sequence of characters within the document."

Given the recommendation (and provision) of prefix and suffix, the
expectation would be that it selects every "itinirary" typo in the document.

Cheers,
Benjamin


> Food for thought.
>
> Regards–
> –Doug
>
>