Re: what about CSV fragments?

hello alf.

On 2014-07-09, 12:39 , Alf Eaton wrote:
> On 9 July 2014 11:00, Erik Wilde <dret@berkeley.edu
> <mailto:dret@berkeley.edu>> wrote:
>     this draft has become http://tools.ietf.org/html/__rfc7111
>     <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7111>, so there is an existing
>     specification for how to identify CSV fragments. as the co-author of
>     this spec
> In that case, do you think that RFC 7111 answers the question of "how to
> link to cells/columns/rows in a CSV file" well enough that this group
> doesn't need to discuss it further?

it does give one possible answer, but whether it's a good enough answer 
depends on your requirements. it's simple in that it allows you to 
basically identify what you would graphically select with (possible 
multiple) rectangular selections in a spreadsheet UI. if you want 
something more fancy (in terms of selection or robustness against 
changes), it may not be what you're looking for.

> Perhaps the question is actually broader than just CSV files, though,
> and it would be useful to be able to annotate parts of an object in a
> collection that may be serialised in any format (CSV, JSON, etc). Do you
> know if there has been any discussion of how to link to a property of a
> resource in a way that could still be applied regardless of the
> serialisation format?

on the web you can only identify based on media types and their fragment 
identification schemes, and these are per media type. in an ideal world, 
they would be across media types, allowing fragment identification to be 
robust across mechanisms such as content negotiation. i think pretty 
much everybody working with web resources did have this idea at some 
point in time, but that's not how the web works (at least not the web we 
currently have). i happen to think that there are good reasons why it 
doesn't work like this, but that's a different issue.

in terms of web architecture: since fragment identification is not 
robust across media types, the logical conclusion is that is you want to 
identify resources independent of media types, you have to turn them 
into full-fledged URI-identified resources.

cheers,

dret.

-- 
erik wilde | mailto:dret@berkeley.edu  -  tel:+1-510-2061079 |
            | UC Berkeley  -  School of Information (ISchool) |
            | http://dret.net/netdret http://twitter.com/dret |

Received on Wednesday, 9 July 2014 14:21:03 UTC