RE: Issue: SOURCE_PROPERTY_UNDERSPECIFIED

> From: w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org
> [mailto:w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Jim Whitehead
> Sent: Monday, May 13, 2002 6:32 PM
> To: Roy T. Fielding
> Cc: Webdav WG (E-mail)
> Subject: RE: Issue: SOURCE_PROPERTY_UNDERSPECIFIED
>
>
> Roy Fielding writes:
> > In my opinion, WebDAV needs to solve this issue before progressing
> > on the standards track.
>
> I agree. Authoring access to an unprocessed source representation of a
> resource has been a WebDAV goal from the very beginning (see
> Section 5.5 of
> RFC 2291). Removing RFC 2518's mechanism for accomplishing this
> doesn't help
> reach the goal -- it's just a punt.
>
> Jason Crawford writes:
> > But it's under specified and needs work, no interoperability
> > has been determined, and no one has been yelling for it.
>
> Julian Reschke writes:
> > The issue that we have to resolve is that RFC2518 *does* specify
> > a property that signals source resources, however the mechanism
> > is underspecified, and because of that (and other reasons) we
> > don't have interoperable implementations of it.
>
> In what way(s) is this mechanism underspecified? From my perspective, it
> provides sufficient information for an authoring client to discover a URL
> where authoring can take place.

The main issues are that

- the text and examples in the RFC just do not make sense to me (see [1])

- the source property doesn't offer enough information to display
information about the *types* of link relations

[1] <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-dist-auth/2001OctDec/0119.html>

> I assert that, given a few weeks of coding, we could easily demonstrate at
> least two clients and two servers interoperating on this feature as
> currently specified. There are no obvious technical impediments
> to doing so.

Do you have specific servers and clients in mind?

Received on Monday, 13 May 2002 12:47:49 UTC