Re: [Widgets] Manifest format

Hi Marcos,
This is likely to be an issue with many different opinions. There are
actually two questions here.

First, should there be a manifest file that lists the contents of the ZIP
package? Let's assume the answer is yes. Then, you probably want to have an
attribute such as 'type' that defines the MIME type of each particular file
such as you describe below. My personal opinion is that it is always better
to KISS, which translates into standards groups holding a ruthless sword
that battles against feature creep of non-critical features, and in my mind
manifest files are non-critical in many common workflows because the ZIP
file itself has a directory and because the most common payload format,
HTML, works on the Web very well without manifest files. My pragmatic
proposal would be to define the file format for the manifest and define a
standard location and name for the manifest within the package, but make it
optional. In other words, manifests are not required but if present must
conform to the spec. One more thing. If possible, to accelerate time to
market and industry adopton, I would push the manifest file out of version
1.0, but have the 1.0 specification state reserve a future location for the
manifest file.

Second, some people will argue that ZIP packaging would benefit from a
feature that associates particular extensions with particular MIME types.
For example, all *.png files should be treated as PNG files. These
associations tell the user agent about the file handling expections from
the author that created the package. Obviously, if you have such a feature
to map extensions to MIME type, then the need to have a 'type' attribute in
the manifest file becomes less critical. If anyone proposes such a feature,
I would pull out the ruthless sword and not pursue this in version 1.0.

Overall, I suggest focusing on KISS and holding up the ruthless sword,
especially since so many of the widget systems are based on browser
technologies. A common workflow will be building a mini Web application
using HTML+JS+CSS+DOM+etc., creating a config file, and then just ZIP'ing
it up. Don't add complications to that workflow if you can avoid it, else
the industry will be disinclined to adopt it.

Jon



                                                                           
             "Marcos Caceres"                                              
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             10/08/2007 11:47          [Widgets] Manifest format           
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Hi,
I'm wondering if we should define a simple manifest format that
authors can optionally use in a widget package (manifest.xml or as
part of config.xml). The purpose of the manifest format would be to
associate files in the zip archive with media types (particularly for
cases where the file extension may be ambiguous, unassociable, or
missing). For example:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<manifest xmlns="http://www.w3.org/ns/widgets">
   <file path="/data/output.json" type="text/javascript">
   <file path="/graphics/graph.data" type="image/png">
   <file path="/audio/music" type="audio/mpeg">
</manifest>

FWIW, OOXML-OPC, ODF, and OCF define a manifest format.

Kind regards,
--
Marcos Caceres
http://datadriven.com.au