Re: Problems and Opportunities at purl.org

Hi Shane,


> On Nov 11, 2015, at 09:08, Shane McCarron <shane@aptest.com> wrote:
> 
> Happy to help with this in whatever way it makes sense.  Having a simpler interface for the typical use cases might be a good thing.  But we would need to make it bullet-proof.  A service like this becomes indispensable quickly.  And then we run into the situation where some innocuous-seeming change messes up the world for others.  Not good.


Yes, that is a good argument for simplicity.


> I have been following this thread, but without digging back into it... do we have access to the data from purl.org <http://purl.org/> so we *could* port it over?  


OCLC seems willing to provide that, IFF we come up with an acceptable plan.


Regards,
Dave
--
http://about.me/david_wood


> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 5:11 AM, Norman Gray <norman@astro.gla.ac.uk <mailto:norman@astro.gla.ac.uk>> wrote:
> 
> David and Jason, hello.
> 
> On 11 Nov 2015, at 1:41, David Wood wrote:
> 
> I actually agree with Jason - but think we need an optional UI for non-technical users on top of the GitHub interface.
> 
> Not just for non-technical users, perhaps.
> 
> The w3id.org <http://w3id.org/> solution of letting everyone customise a pile of .htaccess files is a very smart one, because it let w3id.org <http://w3id.org/> get up quickly, but I hope it's just seen as an interim solution.
> 
> At present, I can apparently use _anything_ from mod_rewrite in there, which gives me a great deal of scope for being Clever, which would be a vice.  It would also tie w3id.org <http://w3id.org/> to Apache, or at least to a mod_rewrite work-a-like for all eternity, so may not be an optimal archival solution.
> 
> A pile of .htaccess files is a fine implementation technology, but not, I think, an interface.
> 
> As an alternative, one could imagine something as simple as a CSV file:
> 
>     /people/nxg/myurl,http://example.org/foo/myurl <http://example.org/foo/myurl>
>     /people/nxg/tree1/*,http://example.org/bar/$$/index.html <http://example.org/bar/$$/index.html>
>     /people/nxg/tree2/([a-z]*)-v([0-9*),http://example.org/baz/$1/version-$2 <http://example.org/baz/$1/version-$2>
> 
> Put angle brackets round that and call it XML, or curly brackets and call it JSON, and you're up-to-the-minute.  And technology-agnostic.
> 
> Something like that could be prepared (on- or off-line), uploaded, validated, and journaled, quite easily perhaps.
> 
> One could also take a great deal of useful inspiration from DNS zone files.
> 
> Also, as a more general point, I consider myself a technical user, but I... am not a fan of git.  Not a fan.  A not-fan.  Not, by any means or in any sense, an Enthusiast.
> 
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Norman
> 
> 
> -- 
> Norman Gray  :  https://nxg.me.uk <https://nxg.me.uk/>
> SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Shane McCarron
> Managing Director, Applied Testing and Technology, Inc.