Re: Namespace Draft

>>Agreed, which is why the Depth header can take the value 0 (the collection
>itself), 1 (the immediate non-collection members of the collection),
>infinity (go as deep as you can).  Do you see problems with this approach?
>
>That's not what the spec says s.v. 5.3; it lists only 1 and infinity,
>and I see I misread, thinking that values in between were allowed.
>I am confused by the terms "immediate member resources" (what is
>the force of "immediate") and "internal descendant resources"
>(not in 2. Terms).

Right.  INDEX is defined to return a listing of the members of a
collection.  In the example below:

  A
 / \
J   K
|
Z

Depth of 0 would be just A (and hence a very boring listing).  Depth of 1
is A, J, K.  Depth Infinity is A, J, K, Z.  So, INDEX was limited to Depth
1 and Infinity so it would actually return something (Depth 0 would only
report information about the collection itself, perhaps its human-readable
title).

The intent of "immediate member resources" is the Depth 1 non-collection
resources, but the proposal should be more explicit in its language.

>In either case it would appear that External Member Resources
>would not be listed, yet their only sin is that they possess
>an absolute URI not relative to their parent's (the collection's?)
>URI.  So INDEX will not give a complete listing of the contents
>of a collection if some are differently URI'd than the collection
>itself, even if they are on the same server.  Is that right
>or am I missing something?  (And did you intend to allow integers
>between 1 and infinity?)

Urrr, I think this is a problem with the wording of the proposal.  The
intent is certainly to return a listing of external members during an
INDEX, but I agree with you, the proposal does not clearly indicate this is
the desired behavior.


>And what is a "noncollection member of the collection"?  An
>internal member resource that is not itself a collection?

Yes.  I agree, "noncollection member of the collection" is a really awkward
term.

- Jim

Received on Wednesday, 18 June 1997 19:35:53 UTC