Discussion needed on submission verb (method)

Hello everyone,

Please discuss the following issue on the list this week:

http://htmlwg.mn.aptest.com/cgi-bin/xforms-issues/Submission?id=103;user=guest;statetype=4;upostype=-1;changetype=-1;restype=-1

Please see the notes I put into place. 

The idea at the time this was resolved (in Venice, I believe) was for 
submission's @method to be an abstraction that controlled things like how 
to serialize. 

We then decided to use the term 'verb' to allow finer grain control over 
the exact operation to be requested by a submission.  The http binding for 
the verb is that it sets the string that is referred to in RFC 2616 as the 
'method' but which has with some frequency also been called the HTTP Verb.

If we renamed the 'verb' attribute/element pair to instead be 'method' we 
would have the problem that it would conflict with the @method attribute 
we already have.  So, you would be setting the abstract 'method' to 
virtually any string, making it impossible for us to define the 
serialization.

So, doing the chair thing here, I would suggest that the working group 
already considered the name 'method' and rejected it, instead resolving to 
use the name verb for the above reasons.

The last call issue does ask for a clearer definition of what the verb is. 
 I think the LC comment is fishing for us to say that it connects to the 
HTTP method from RFC 2616, but we cannot come out and say that because we 
want submission to be useful for protocols other than http.  I think the 
best we can say is:

The <term>submission verb</term> provides the operation being requested of 
the server by the submission.  For example, the submission verb sets the 
'method' component of the HTTP protocol [RFC 2616].

Best regards,
John Boyer