Re: SWD issues, citable URIs for

Jon,

On Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 11:07:32AM -0500, Jon Phipps wrote:
> >It's great that in the Table of Contents of
> >BestPracticeRecipesIssues [1] one can click on the issue
> >"COOKBOOK-I1.1" to jump to that issue.  I see this uses
> >a long URI [2].  How usable is that URI for the purposes
> >of citation?
...
> That URL references an anchor/ID that isn't generated by the TOC but
> is inherent in the page structure. It's stable in the sense that it's
> not determined by the position of the referenced header in the page,
> but it appears to be a hash of the wording of the header. So it's only
> stable, and thus citable, if the header content doesn't change.

How clever...!  So as long as we do not change
the heading for an issue, the URIs should continue to work.
We should not be changing those headings in any case.
I have added a sentence to this effect in Section 1.1 of
[1].

[1] http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/wiki/IssuesProcess

> >If the Appendix on Issue Submission [4] were removed in favor
> >of a pointer to IssuesProcess [5], there would be no special
> >need in this short document for a separate Table of Contents.
> >
> >However, the Issues in Section 3 should ideally be clickable,
> >with URIs suitable for citation purposes.  Could "1. Contents"
> >and "3. Overview of issues" somehow be merged so that the
> >overview of issues functions as the table of contents,
> >ideally with persistent URIs for the issues?
> 
> Yes, Ralph suggested this and I unhelpfully simply didn't do it rather
> than discuss the pros/cons (mostly cons). Since the header references
> used in the TOC aren't generated as the page is being edited, it's a
> pain to save the page, copy the auto-generated anchors for use in
> links in the Issues Overview. The simple approach is to include the
> TOC, which does the scanning in a second pass before page output and
> put it as close as possible to the overview.
> 
> However, MoinMoin also includes an {anchor} macro [6] that allows you
> to embed an anchor of your own design in the page -- the approach used
> in the RDFin XHTML issues page [7]. This requires a few minor extra
> steps, but is certainly do-able. It has the advantage of a stable,
> permanent URL as well.
> 
> All of this would be much easier with some custom MoinMoin macros (if
> someone had the time). And of course we could always use a dedicated
> issue tracking tool.
> 
> I've changed the BestPracticeIssues page [1] with some changes to the
> links and the TOC , which I still think is useful.
> 
> Please let me know what you think.

Developing further MoinMoin macros sounds like a small but
not inconsiderable project.  But I see you have already moved
the URIs from the Table of Contents to the issues table and
now make use of the {anchor} macro [1] so it looks to me like
the problem is solved.  Nice work!

Tom

[1] http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/wiki/BestPracticeRecipesIssues?action=diff&rev2=12&rev1=8

-- 
Tom Baker - tbaker@tbaker.de - baker@sub.uni-goettingen.de

Received on Thursday, 11 January 2007 10:22:07 UTC