Re: Auxiliary proposal for passing MIME data through web intents

Hi Greg,

On Apr 26, 2012, at 01:39 , Greg Billock wrote:
> So far we've spent most of our time focused on the API spec. But
> another important component is detailing how actors using the API
> should interpret action and type strings. Here's an example of the
> kind of thinking we need to codify for that. It's a work in progress,
> but please tell me what you think of the contents, as well as how to
> format these auxiliary documents.
> 
> Passing MIME type data through Web Intents [1]

I agree that this is both a useful and an important aspect to look at, but both the documents you point to tell me that I require permission to access them. Can you please make them public?

> We talked about passing schema.org types as well. Here's a document
> spelling out how that would work (following the discussions we had at
> the Shenzhen F2F).

Having thought and chatter about this some more, I don't think that we ought to specifically single-out schema.org. A type ought just to be a URL (hopefully with something at the end of it that can help you discover what the type is all about). But people should be able to mint the URLs they want.

For instance, if I built a distributed game system I might need a way to pick an orc. There doesn't seem to be a schema.org/Orc and I'm not sure I want there to be one.

Also, piggy-backing atop schema.org can be problematic when you have a good reason not to exactly match the data model that the type there requires. For example, the http://schema.org/Person type doesn't really match up all that well with the sort of information you'd find in an address book (it's rather strongly geared towards the sort of databases that news agencies keep about famous people, with a little bit of social networking pixie dust sprinkled over it). As a result I would expect (though this is just my opinion at this stage) that a Contact over Intents spec would use a type like http://w3.org/types/contact.

Note that I'm providing this feedback just based on the above cited paragraph and our discussion in Shenzhen — I haven't seen the documents you point to since they're inaccessible :)

> In general, these documents follow a form I'd like to see us follow
> for "type" string documentation -- detailing what you need to put
> where when invoking an intent with a given type, and what services can
> expect when they see those types.
> 
> I'm not sure what format we want these in -- move them alongside the
> API spec? Put them on webintents.org? Put them on the w3 web intents
> wiki?

I think it makes sense to document these on their own, standalone. I agree with timeless that making them productions of the TF makes sense. Note that if we also add some minimal microdata to describe types, we can also make them machine-discoverable.

> timeless suggested [1] having these documents be productions of the
> task force. If that's a plan with broad agreement, should they go into
> mercurial? Respec formatted? Fill me in on the procedure, please, as
> well as the content of the documents.

Feel free to use the repo you prefer so long as it's publicly available and supports documents just being seen on the Web. Inside the W3C infrastructure you can use CVS (if you really insist) or Mercurial, but some groups also use GitHub (using the gh-pages branch to publish the docs). It's up to you!

As for ReSpec, if it's what you want to use then by all means go ahead (and as usual don't hesitate to bug me for support).

-- 
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/ - @robinberjon

Received on Thursday, 26 April 2012 09:44:13 UTC