user assigned names for services

On 23/11/11 18:26, Greg Billock wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 10:06 AM, Giuseppe Pascale 
> <giuseppep@opera.com <mailto:giuseppep@opera.com>> wrote:
>
>     I guess there is a need to standardize some actions otherwise I
>     see the risk that some "real word actions" are implemented via
>     different "intents actions".
>     Of course we could start having all actions as examples and
>     promote them to spec once they are mature enough.
>
>
> One of our explicit goals is to have enough flexibility in the 
> implementation such that registries like http://www.openintents.org/ 
> <http://www.openintents.org/en/> for Android intents can coordinate 
> the namespace. That said, having a document providing a focus for an 
> initial set of intents which we believe are particularly well-served 
> by the spec is important, since it can provide a way for clients and 
> services to converge so that users get maximum utility.

It is worth looking at multiscreen use cases where the user is seeking 
to display some content, perhaps a video on one or more screens, e.g. 
you may have a connected TV in your bedroom, and your living room (aka 
lounge). These devices can be discovered via zeroconf or UPnP and 
registered by the web run-time, but the interesting question is how 
users identify the different screens, especially if they are the same 
model of device.

In zeroconf, each device ensures it has a unique persistent name on the 
local network, e.g. screen-2, and users can assign their own more 
meaningful name, e.g. living-room-tv. For web-intents this binding could 
be held by the web run-time, and synched in some way, so that the names 
are shared across the different web run-times used by the occupants of 
the home.

Note that although the above scenario refers to services provided by 
devices on a home network, user assigned names is of more general value 
and applicable to services provided by the same device that is executing 
the web run-time (or devices directly connected to it), and to services 
provided in the cloud. You can think of this as *user assigned names for 
favourites*.

You could argue that this is something for the web run-times to deal 
with, and not exposed by the web intents API. However, is that always 
the case? I suspect that users and developers will want a way for 
applications to make use of names for particular services, so that an 
application can request a binding for an intent to a named service. This 
has the corollary that applications can access the name of a service 
after the user has bound the intent.

p.s. I have added this to the wiki for future reference.

-- 
Dave Raggett<dsr@w3.org>  http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett