[wbs] response to 'ISSUE-27: @rel value ownership, registry consideration - Straw Poll for Objections'

The following answers have been successfully submitted to 'ISSUE-27: @rel
value ownership, registry consideration - Straw Poll for Objections' (HTML
Working Group) for Julian Reschke.



---------------------------------
Objections to the Change Proposal to replace the Wiki link relation
registry with that defined in RFC 5988
----
We have a Change Proposal to replace the Wiki link relation registry with
that defined in RFC 5988. If you have strong objections to adopting this
Change Proposal, please state your objections below.  Keep in mind, you
must actually state an objection, not merely cite someone else. If you feel
that your objection has already been adequately addressed by someone else,
then it is not necessary to repeat it.
Objections: 





---------------------------------
Objections to the Change Proposal to have a registry be hosted by the W3C 
----
We have a Change Proposal to have the registry be hosted by the W3C. If
you have strong objections to adopting this Change Proposal, please state
your objections below.  Keep in mind, you must actually state an objection,
not merely cite someone else. If you feel that your objection has already
been adequately addressed by someone else, then it is not necessary to
repeat it.
Objections: 
The main issue with this change proposal is that it doesn't unify relation
types across protocols and document formats. Link relations apply to many
non-HTML formats, and also occur as metadata outside documents, and should
have a consistent meaning no matter where they show up.

Some more comments on the actual CP text, plus a few questions:

"1. The person registering a link relation can't have the relation appear
in the registry with a single registration action but is on the hook for
defending his/her registration over the course of multiple email round
trips to the Designated Experts and during this time the relation doesn't
appear in the registry."

Yes, there's no provisional registry. But there is an issue tracker that
can be used to track registrations that are work-in-progress (see
<http://paramsr.us/tracker/>).

"2. Registrations in the IANA registry are requested to be generic beyond
HTML. Requiring the person who is about to register a rel token for use in
HTML formulate the definition of the token in more abstract terms raises
the barrier for entry. There isn't general agreement that a higher level of
abstraction and generality is worth the trouble."

That is indeed the most important issue in this discussion. I believe that
having consistent definitions would be useful (for instance, when
translating between formats), and that the additional work of defining the
relation in a format-agnostic way is both small and worth the effort.

"3. Changing how the IETF/IANA operate to satisfaction seems to involve
considerably more discussion and time than setting up an HTML-specific rel
registry elsewhere."

It would be good to know in which way the CP author *expects* the registry
to change. I believe 1) is addressed by the associated tracker. 2) is
indeed the issue we should decide on.

Otherwise, this proposal makes a lot of sense if we indeed *do* decide
that harmonization between formats using link relations is not important.

A few specific comments/questions on the technical part:

a) Is the W3C indeed *willing* to run registries? This seemed to be
unclear when we discussed this as TPAC Lyon. If it is, I'll probably
propose to move the meta/@name registry as well.

b) Is the software capable of supporting the machine readability use case
that was mentioned?

c) My understanding is that users will be required to obtain a W3C "Public
Account", which requires registering (with a real name), and may not be
fully automated. This may indeed be a higher barrier than simply sending an
email to the IANA link relations mailing list.




---------------------------------
Objections to the Change Proposal to use the microformats Wiki page for
the registry
----
We have a Change Proposal to use the microformats Wiki page for the
registry. If you have strong objections to adopting this Change Proposal,
please state your objections below.  Keep in mind, you must actually state
an objection, not merely cite someone else. If you feel that your objection
has already been adequately addressed by someone else, then it is not
necessary to repeat it.
Objections: 
The main issue with this change proposal is that it doesn't unify relation
types across protocols and document formats. Link relations apply to many
non-HTML formats, and also occur as metadata outside documents, and should
have a consistent meaning no matter where they show up.

This could be addressed by the Microformats community embracing a broader
view of link relations, but as far as I know, nobody has made a concrete
proposal for that (nor could this WG tell the Microformats community what
to do).

Also, I recall people asked for machine-processable content of the
registry (for validators). How does the Microformats Wiki address this?

Additional comments:

On License -- "The registry we adopt should be available under a license
compatible with both Free and proprietary software. The existing-rel-values
page of the Microformats wiki is in the public domain, and as such its
contents are able to be incorporated into Free software as well as
proprietary software." -> I'm not aware of any concrete proposal of using
the contents of an IANA registry.

"Must be able to register HTML-specific details" --> see ISSUE-124 and
<http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/link-relations/current/msg00182.html>;
so this is work-in-progress as of last weekend.

Furthermore, this CP contains a set of misunderstandings that I pointed
out last December, see
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2010Dec/0112.html> (and
please consider that mail as part of my feedback). As far as I can tell,
that mail didn't get any feedback from Edward.


These answers were last modified on 23 March 2011 at 21:02:21 U.T.C.
by Julian Reschke

Answers to this questionnaire can be set and changed at
http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/40318/issue-27-objection-poll/ until
2011-03-24.

 Regards,

 The Automatic WBS Mailer

Received on Wednesday, 23 March 2011 21:03:03 UTC