Asking for feedback on API design from the Web Browser Community

Hello Doug,
As you might remember we had some discussions in Santa Clara about who should implement our API and how. We are considering two places where the API can be used: in the Web-browser or as Web-service (see picture). 

 

The current FPWD API (http://www.w3.org/TR/mediaont-api-1.0/ ) defines one function for each core-property, but we probably resort to have one function for all properties: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-media-annotation/2009Nov/0072.html

 

For example:

md.get("contributor")

 

- would return a set of values. Those values would basically be text, but would have an optional attribute (call it "role" or
"subproperty"...) indicating more precisely the kind of contributor represented by the text.

 

Further, recall that we had a vivid discussion about sub-properties. Currently we aim at NOT introducing sub-properties but rather return the inherited sub-properties from the original format. Example:

  

md.getValues("contributor")
 
returning
 
   [ { "value": "John Doe", "subproperty": "id3:composer" },
 
     { "value": "Jane Doe", "subproperty": "id3:lyricist" };

 
or see: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-media-annotation/2009Nov/0081.html
 
 
We would very much appreciate any feedback from your connections in the Web Browser (development) community. Also the naming of this function is important, so as not be in conflict with existing APIs, i.e. getMetadata, md.getValue etc.
 
 
Regards
Joakim Söderberg