Comments from Micropayments Working Group about fee links

Hello,

I had an action item for several weeks to pursue a perceived
dependency with the Micropayments WG about how User Agents
would recognize (and convey) information about paying links.
Below is the response from one of the Micropayments WG members.

Here is the link to the 9 June Working Draft from that WG:

    http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-Micropayment-Markup-19990609 

I believe the pertintent section of this document is 4.5
("Price field"). However, the document in question says:

<BLOCKQUOTE>
The price parameter, which takes a character string,
displays the amount and currency to the Customer.
</BLOCKQUOTE>

I think "display" is the wrong term. Also, perhaps there
is a shortcut to indicate that the price is zero.

I will continue to pursue this issue with the Working Group.

 - Ian

amir.herzberg@il.ibm.com wrote:
> 
> Ian says,
> 
> > There's a dependency between User Agent (Accessibility
> > Guidelines) and Micropayments: users agents must be able
> > to indicate to users that following a link will require
> > them to pay a fee. The question is how to indicate
> > to user agents that a link is a fee link. For example,
> 
> Actually I believe we have addressed this perfectly well in the existing
> markup proposal. Specifically, per-fee-links have been defined in a
> _different_ way than regular (free) links. Indeed we even gave some
> guidelines as to how the user agent (in our case we call this agent the
> `per fee link handler`) is to indicate the fee. However of course for
> accessibility reasons, special per-fee-link-handlers may implement special
> ways of indicating fees (e.g. for blind users). In summary - I believe
> you'll find our existing recommendation is fine
> regarding this particular comment. Your feedback on this and other points
> welcome!
> 
> Best Regards,
> Amir Herzberg
> Manager, E-Business and Security Technologies
> IBM Research - Haifa Lab (Tel Aviv Office)
> http://www.hrl.il.ibm.com
> New e-mail: amir@il.ibm.com
> New Lotus notes mail: amir herzberg/haifa/ibm@IBMIL

-- 
Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel/Fax:                     +1 212 684-1814