RE: does file content deserve its own class?

Hi group,
See comments below. 

> During this week's teleconference we continued the discussion 
> on "test subjects that are local files". Here the minutes of 
> this discussion:
>   <http://www.w3.org/2006/10/04-er-minutes#item01>
> 
> 
> There was no resolution but several important points were made:
>  * It would be useful to have a possibility to store a 
> (base64) copy of the file contents (for example when the file 
> is not publicly available).

I think this is always useful, not just for file content.
On the other hand, and I am just wondering, if the file is not publicly available, do people really want to share the file? 

So the question is, should EARL be just for Web Content as currently defined in the schema? (i.e. Information on the World Wide Web) and let people extend it to fit further requirements? (e.g. Non public content)

>  * File URI can not be assumed to be unique and so a property 
> to store the file name is needed as a label for the file 
> contents (see also related comment by Charles [1]).

The problem with this approach is that we can easily find two or more "index.html" file names for example, and then the only way to see the differences is looking at the file content.
What about a checksum, MD5 or similar property?
Just realized that we have the same problem with "local web content" e.g http://localhost/whatever/ and with whatever URI that's not publicy avalaible (test servers for example).

> A conclusion that can be drawn from this is that there is a 
> separate use case for FileContent from WebContent. The two 
> are indeed related and WebContent could be extended to fit 
> the requirements for local files (a generic "Content" 
> class?). So the question is: does file content deserve its own class?

Note that we have a new scenario now, and it's becoming more a NonPublicyAvalaibleContent (FileContent, InternalServerContent, etc.) VS. PublicyAvalaibleContent (WebContent) question
 
Regards,
 CI.

 
--------------------------------------

Carlos Iglesias

CTIC Foundation
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33203 - Gijón, Asturias, Spain 

phone: +34 984291212
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email: carlos.iglesias@fundacionctic.org
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Received on Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:53:06 UTC