RE: New Requirements Draft

In so far as I am concerned a variant is simply "yet another version"
and requires no special handling outside of the normal versioning
mechanisms.

As for your assertion Andre, that if web sites had proper variant tools
they would use them, this would contradict your previous statement that
variant support is widespread through versioning systems. Most major
versioning systems hook directly into the Internet, so apparently
variant support isn't so terribly important.

Let us be clear on the issue, variant supports means creating mechanisms
which allow for a client to instruct a server on how it should handle
accept headers. I believe this to be a server configuration issue and
out of scope for WebDAV.

			Yaron

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Andre van der Hoek [SMTP:andre@serl.cs.colorado.edu]
> Sent:	Wednesday, August 27, 1997 11:34 AM
> To:	Yaron Goland
> Cc:	'Martin J. Dürst'; 'Judith Slein'; w3c-dist-auth@w3.org;
> andre@serl.cs.colorado.edu
> Subject:	Re: New Requirements Draft 
> 
> 
> 
> >Would you care to back this up with some facts? What is a "serious"
> web
> >site? Which of these "serious" web sites use variants? What
> percentage
> >of all web sites are "serious" and use variants? What commercial
> systems
> >deploy with built in support for variant handling? How many people
> use
> >those systems? Of the people using those systems, how many actually
> use
> >the variant features? How many web sites use variants as opposed to
> >having a "choose English here" tag? How many web sites that use
> variants
> >do so through their own custom code? How many web sites handle
> primarily
> >language variants by having an initial detection of the
> accept-language
> >tag and then redirect the person to an entire site in a single
> language?
> 
> Both Martin and Yaron are missing the point here. WebDAV is not only
> ment to
> version Web pages, but instead if versioning documents. In that
> respect Martin
> is right: variants are an integral and very important aspect of
> versioning, as
> well as authoring. Therefore, regardless of the answers to the above
> questions,
> I can point you to the series of SCM workshops that contains a large
> body of
> literature on variants and its importance in versioning and
> development.
> 
> AS WebDAV is supposed to be generic, i.e., any type of document can be
> 
> handlded by it, this issue should be addressed.
> 
> === Andre ===
> 
> PS: One question of Yaron I just have to answer: "How many web sites
> use 
>     variants as opposed to "choose English here" tag?". If there would
> 
>     be adequate support for the handling of variants, all these web
> sites
>     *would* use variants; but given the lack of adequate support, they
>     are not. Boom, there is your requirement......

Received on Wednesday, 27 August 1997 15:12:59 UTC