RE: Issue: SOURCE_PROPERTY_UNDERSPECIFIED

> From: w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org
> [mailto:w3c-dist-auth-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Joe Orton
> Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2002 10:41 PM
> To: Webdav WG (E-mail)
> Subject: Re: Issue: SOURCE_PROPERTY_UNDERSPECIFIED
>
>
> On Mon, May 13, 2002 at 04:55:38PM -0700, Jim Whitehead wrote:
> >
> > Joe Orton writes:
> > > I just dropped the xlink: from the href attribute, and got rid of the
> > > xlink:role attribute entirely, giving e.g.:
> > >
> > > <D:prop>
> > >  <D:source-set>
> > >   <D:source href="http://example.com/dav/source.xml">Source</D:source>
> > >   <D:source
> href="http://example.com/dav/render.xsl">Stylesheet</D:source>
> > >   <D:source href="http://example.com/dav/etc.etc"/>
> > >  </D:source-set>
> > > </D:prop>
> > >
> >
> > I like this, except for the "Source" and "Stylesheet" not being
> individual
> > elements or attributes. The i18n characteristics of the
> approach above are
> > not great -- I can just see a Kanji UI popping up a pick list of English
> > words, ugh. What was the perceived problem with using the xlink:role
> > attribute (and Xlink syntax in general?)
>
> I just thought it was unnecessary to have to depend on yet another
> specification for something this simple.

What do you mean by "depend"? We just reuse two standard attribute names
(xlink:href and xlink:role). That's what XLink is for -- if every
spec/document/protocol designer would take this position, it wouldn't make
any sense to try to come up with common vocabularies for this.

> An alternative proposal:
>
>  <D:prop>
>   <D:source>
>    <D:link>
>     <D:href>http://example.com/dav/source.xml</D:href>
>     <D:description>Source</D:href>
>    </D:link>
>    <D:link>
>     <D:href>http://example.com/dav/render.xsl</D:href>
>     <D:description>Stylesheet</D:href>
>    </D:link>
>   </D:source>
>  </D:prop>
>
> where the href is mandatory, description is optional; this is i18n
> friendly... any problems with this approach?

It's as i18n friendly as all the other proposals, and still lacks a
machine-readable way to represent the type of a link.

So again, why not just use the Xlink [1] compatible syntax that I proposed
back in October [2]:

   <D:prop xmlns:D="DAV:" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
     <D:source-set>
          <D:source xlink:href="http://foo.bar/src/main.c"
xlink:role="UriDescribingTheRole" xml:lang="en">source file</D:source>
          <D:source xlink:href="http://foo.bar/src/main.lib"
xlink:role="UriDescribingTheRole" xml:lang="en">library file</D:source>
          <D:source xlink:href="http://foo.bar/src/makefile"
xlink:role="UriDescribingTheRole" xml:lang="en">makefile</D:source>
     </D:source-set>
   </D:prop>

What's wrong with it? It fulfills all requirements and uses W3C specs where
applicable.

(Note that xlink:role would be optional, and xml:lang would just need to be
in scope somewhere, just as everywhere else in WebDAV land).



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

Received on Tuesday, 14 May 2002 19:19:34 UTC