RE: web resource and terminology

I just hate nuances, and web document and html document are often used interchangeably without consideration that a web document isn't restricted to being an html document. It's clear that html documents aren't the only content-carrying resources allowed, but outside an audience well-versed in web terminology I expect the difference will get lost. I did a quick search and after an initial wikipedia entry that got it right, every use equated web document with html page.

 

But I get there is also awkwardness when you do, in fact, only want to represent a single html document.

 

Go with Portable Web Content and no one wins... ;)

 

Matt

 

From: Bill Kasdorf [mailto:bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com] 
Sent: September 27, 2015 7:11 PM
To: Matt Garrish <matt.garrish@bell.net>; 'Leonard Rosenthol' <lrosenth@adobe.com>; 'W3C Digital Publishing IG' <public-digipub-ig@w3.org>
Subject: RE: web resource and terminology

 

On "curation," I wasn't actually recommending it, I was just speculating that perhaps that was what was meant rather than "collation." I agree, a more neutral term, something like "assemble" or "collect" or their noun forms might be best. "Assemble" has the connotation of a bunch of stuff intended to work together, whereas "collect" really just connotes "gather together."

 

I like the direction you're going with the definition, but I still have a problem calling it a Web Document instead of a Web Publication. I have a hard time thinking of a big complex collection of resources as a document, but I don't have a hard time thinking of a simple standalone document as a publication.

 

--Bill K

 

From: Matt Garrish [mailto:matt.garrish@bell.net] 
Sent: Sunday, September 27, 2015 7:04 PM
To: Bill Kasdorf; 'Leonard Rosenthol'; 'W3C Digital Publishing IG'
Subject: RE: web resource and terminology

 

I agree that's better than collation, but curation is still odd. Do you curate your epub file? Do you curate a web page to make a portable representation of it?

 

Using "curation" also suggests strong ties with digital curation, and, while that activity that might use this portable format as part of the larger process of curation, it seems like unnecessary baggage to saddle the definition with.

 

Is how the resources came to be collected together of any importance compared to what they're intended to represent? That point is currently hard to discern, but why not something like "A Web Document is set of interrelated Web Resources that is intended to be considered as a single document or publication."?

 

Matt

 

From: Bill Kasdorf [mailto:bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com] 
Sent: September 27, 2015 4:53 PM
To: Leonard Rosenthol <lrosenth@adobe.com <mailto:lrosenth@adobe.com> >; Matt Garrish <matt.garrish@bell.net <mailto:matt.garrish@bell.net> >; 'W3C Digital Publishing IG' <public-digipub-ig@w3.org <mailto:public-digipub-ig@w3.org> >
Subject: RE: web resource and terminology

 

Actually, three of the four non-religious definitions of "collate" in Merriam Webster are about arranging in a proper order, and people in publishing almost always associate it with ordering. So although you're technically correct that it doesn't always mean ordering, most of the time it does.

 

My guess was that possibly "curation" was meant, not "collation," which has more of a sense of a purposeful gathering together.

 

 

 

From: Leonard Rosenthol [mailto:lrosenth@adobe.com] 
Sent: Sunday, September 27, 2015 1:55 PM
To: Matt Garrish; 'W3C Digital Publishing IG'
Subject: Re: web resource and terminology

 

Matt – let me see if I can help.  (and, anyone else, feel free to correct me)

 

You are correct that a style sheet and a script (or a font) are as much resources as HTML is.  That is as it should be, because in the context of a web document, they aren’t necessarily different.  There is no reliance on a “primary resource” (as there is with EPUB, for example).  

 

Essential content is what would be displayed to the user and/or machine processor – depending on the context.   So it might be displaying text, or a .csv of spreadsheet data or … But it’s not a font, for example, that wouldn’t (necessarily) change the content itself (granted there are exceptions to that rule as well, but…)

 

Collation is simply a grouping – it has nothing to do with ordering. 

 

I don’t recall if “web content” was suggested or not, but from your description, I don’t think it fits our model (or at least mine).  There are things that fit into a PWD that are neither “web content” nor “rendering resource” - for example, my .csv in the previous example.  But that is a perfectly valid web resource.  I think web resource is a more generic form of both – and maybe we could define it that way, if necessary. (though I don’t see the necessity right now).

 

I think the single page vs. multiple page – or the general problem of “sectioning’ a web document hasn’t yet been raised.

 

Leonard

 

From: Matt Garrish
Date: Sunday, September 27, 2015 at 8:52 AM
To: 'W3C Digital Publishing IG'
Subject: web resource and terminology
Resent-From: <public-digipub-ig@w3.org <mailto:public-digipub-ig@w3.org> >
Resent-Date: Sunday, September 27, 2015 at 8:52 AM

 

I've been trying to read through the terminology and find there's a confusing reliance on "web resource" to mean both the content of the document/publication and the resources needed to render the document.

 

The definition of web resource seems reasonable enough, in that anything that can be referenced by a URI is a resource. By that definition, an HTML document is a web resource, but so is a style sheet, script, etc. Stating that the content of the resource can be retrieved by a protocol doesn't mean that a resource has content in the readable content of the document sense (e.g., a style sheet's "content" is all the rules defined in it).

 

The two sub-bullets then start to make an unstated distinction between types of web resources, however, as an html document will have "essential content", but a style sheet or script wouldn't appear to.

 

The confusion grows in the web document definition, as now web resources are "collated." Is it really the case that fonts, scripts, etc. are combined into a specific ordering? I didn't follow the entire email chain, unfortunately, but I do recall seeing this in relation to an ordering of the content in the web document. Collation makes sense in that context, as it is analogous to the epub spine.

 

And finally, web resource reappears in its more general sense in the third bullet, but here suggesting "essentiality" of certain resources but not others (I take from the discussions this has to do with not every resource impacting the overall readability).

 

Long story short, was consideration given to including a definition of "web content" (as also exists in WCAG) to disambiguate these many uses of "web resource" for both content and rendering resources? Essential web content and functionality is clearer than stated now for resources. A web document as a collation of web content is also clearer, and it being a web resource is less confusing. Portability would depend on the ability to present the content, even if some rendering resources aren't available.

 

Anyway, just wanted to share that thought I had while reading. The definitions are very nuanced right now without the context of the email discussions.

 

And as a side note, if "web document" is the ultimate choice for this then it might be good to bump up in importance that web document != html document from the last sub-bullet of the web document definition. I expect the terms are read as synonymous by many people, in which case having a web document made up of resources makes it sound like you're defining portability only for single pages.

 

Matt