Re: Review of Oct. 27 webarch

On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 01:03, Tim Bray wrote:
> I just finished reading the Oct. 27th webarch.  

Thanks Tim!

> Before I get into 
> details, I want to emphasize that starting now, we *must* have 
> stability in this document if we are to get to last call by year-end.  
> The organization may not be perfect but it's plenty good enough, modulo 
> one section which I argue for removing.  Please, from here on in, can 
> we agree on no more moving things around from section to section and no 
> substantial introduction of new material?  Among other things, I don't 
> think I have the strength for too many end-2-end walkthroughs, but if I 
> have some confidence in the overall stability I'm happy to pitch in 
> with point reviews on this section or that.

I agree that stability is important. Most of the large edits
in this draft were discussed at the Bristol ftf meeting.

> Overall impression: it's getting there.  The vast majority of edits 
> here are along the lines of lose this, cut that, general tightening up.

Great. I have just a few comments below.


> ===1.2.3 Distributed System ====================================
> 
> s/Web as/The Web as/
> 
> But I have concerns with this whole section, maybe I wasn't there but I 
> don't recall any TAG discussion or consensus behind it, a couple of the 
> bullet points e.g. about robots.txt

People have been making a number of points for a while that seem
to fall into a section with roughly this scope. There is not
consensus behind this text. This is a proposal that attempts to
regroup some diverse discussions.

> === 1.2.4 Syntax ==========
> 
> Do we have consensus to use the DanC text with some work on last 
> sentence?

I believe from the previous teleconf that is the expectation.

> ====== 2.3 URI Schemes ==============
> 
> 1st para last sentence s/specifies/may specify/ (some are deliberately 
> silent)
> 
> "Deployed software is more likely to handle the introduction of a new 
> media type than the introduction of a new URI scheme"  I used to think 
> so, but this is actually true?

We have been wrestling with this statement for a while. I believe
DanC is not satisfied with the rationale in this section. I also believe
Roy is not convinced that it's true.

> ======= 2.5 Fragment Identifiers ===============
> 
> Sentence "Note that the presence of a fragment identifier in a URi does 
> not imply that the URI will be dereferenced."  Why would anyone suspect 
> such an implication?  

I think that if we talk about using such identifiers in, say,
an RDF context, this will make more sense. 

> Why are we saying this?  Suggest losing it.
> 
> ======  3. Interaction ================
> 
> Totally disagree with definition of "information resource" in the 
> Editor's note, but we're going to lose that note anyhow right?

By the time we go to last call, yes.


> ======== 3.2 Messages... ==================
> 
> "A message is an event..." is a bit opaque at first, how about: 
> "Message syntax and semantics are specified in a non-exclusive set of 
> protocols (e.g...."
> 
> 2nd para "but not an HTTP POST" huh? wrong I think, the result of a 
> POST can contain all that stuff.

This first appeared in the 1 August draft and is the result
of discussion at our 22 July ftf meeting [1]. Look for the
word POST. The point made at the meeting was that the
representation was not of the resource identified by the
URI in the POST request. 

[1] http://www.w3.org/2003/07/21-tag-summary.html#july22

> ======= 4.4 Separation ==============
> 
> s/Generally authors need to/It is good practice for authors to/
> 
> Should we touch on accessibility issues in this 1st para of 4.4?

Hmm, I thought I did, but now I see I only did in 1.2.3. 
Yes, I think we should.


> ======== 4.6.4 Namespace Documents ========
> 
> I do not think we have the requred level of consensus to support the 
> list "OWL, RDDL, XMLSCHEMA, XHTML"  Unless pretty well everyone but me 
> is prepared to sign up for this list, lose it.  I do not agree on 
> XMLSCHEMA and I don't know enough about OWL to have an intelligent 
> opinion.

Reminder: this was agreed on at the Bristol meeting [2]:

  "Resolved: Accept text from PC with minor editorial tweaks ("currently
used") and addition of references."

That text was the list of formats you cited.

[2] http://www.w3.org/2003/10/06-tag-summary#oct7

> ====== 4.6.6 Media Types ==================
> 
> We lost one of our good practices, along with not using text/xml we 
> need the language about not providing charset= for */*+xml unless you 
> really know, because the downside is big and the upside hard to see.

(I don't believe that this was ever elevated to good practice note.)

> ====== 5. Conformance =========
> 
> Has there been TAG discussion on this?  I don't recall coming to any 
> useful consensus on whether we should have conformance and if so how it 
> should work.

We talked about this in Bristol [3]. There was enough sentiment that
some statement about conformance was necessary that I proposed this
short section. There is obviously not consensus yet that this is
the right short section.

 _ Ian

[3] http://www.w3.org/2003/10/06-tag-summary#oct6



-- 
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                     +1 718 260-9447