Re: Arch Doc: 1 August 2003 Editor's Draft

On Fri, 2003-08-01 at 17:31, Ian B. Jacobs wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> The 1 August 2003 Editor's Draft of "Architecture of
> the World Wide Web" [1] is now available. This draft
> included a lot of changes [2], most of which were based
> on TAG discussion at their recent face-to-face meeting
> in Vancouver (minutes not yet available; expected early
> next week).

Hmm... the core terms from the introduction have been
substantially changed...

|The World Wide Web (WWW, or simply Web) is an information system
|that relates information sources and services, referred to
|collectively as resources ...

That defines resources as information sources and services
and nothing else; that's a substantive change from the earlier text,
which I thought was quite mature:

|Objects in the networked information system called resources
|are identified by Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs).
  -- http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2003/webarch-20030716

it placed no constraints on what a resource is.

Where did this change come from? The changelog says...

1. Introduction: Incorporated text suggested by Roy Fielding."
  -- http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/webarch/changes#changes-20030801

i.e. this change came from work-in-progress from one tag member,
sent only to the tag private list, with no endorsement from
anybody else, that I can see.

That seems like a big step backward from the level
of maturity section 1 had as of the Vancouver meeting.

Hmm... I'm disappointed to see that the record of the Vancouver
meeting doesn't record
  -- my request that the review of each section
  not assume that everybody agreed to everything unless
  they said otherwise; that we solicit endorsements
  as well as criticisms

  -- my endorsement (and Tim Bray's, if not lots
  of others') of the text of the intro section,
  and the definitions of the core terms in particular.

so I can't appeal to that record.
  http://www.w3.org/2003/07/21-tag-summary.html#july22

So as a reviewer like any other reviewr, I ask:
please undo this change and put back the intro text
that was there before.

And I ask the chairs to work with the editor to reduce
churn. Let's not have half a suggestion by one TAG member
turn into substantive changes to text that has been
endorsed previously by multiple TAG members. Let's please
be especially careful with the definitions of the
marked-up terms.


I gather the term "Web components" comes from the
same source...

|...of Web components (e.g., servers, proxies, browsers, spiders,
| multimedia players, and other user agents -- programs acting on
| behalf of a person) and describe their interactions:

Please roll that one back too. Let's keep "agent".

Where did "Web page" come from? I don't see which
changelog entry is relevant.


I guess I'm not inclined to review further. Based on looking
at the first section, I don't find this to be an
improvement over the 16 July draft.


>  A diff file [3] is available but not tremendously
> useful.
> 
>  - Ian
> 
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2003/webarch-20030801
> [2] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/webarch/changes#changes-20030801
> [3] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2003/diff-webarch-20030716.html
-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Wednesday, 6 August 2003 02:02:47 UTC