- From: Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org>
- Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 18:11:58 +0000
- To: W3C TAG <www-tag@w3.org>
I'm prompted to write this (in part) by an announcement [1] of Distributed Multimodal Synchronization Protocol (DMSP) activity to the IETF application area general discussion list [2]. That message refers to an Internet draft about DMSP [3]. I also note that DSMP relates to W3C work on multimodal systems, so I thought it maybe worth mentioning here some of thoughts I mentioned on the IETF list [4]. My recent experience leads me to believe there is a gap in the Web protocol (or "interaction", to use the language of AWWW [6]) landscape. I've recently come across three very different applications, all of which are developing different solutions for what I see is fundamentally the same underlying requirement, viz. delivering notification events to a web browser: 1. DMSP, already mentioned. This requirement is plainly illustrated on page 7 of the Internet draft [3]. 2. Portal software, where there is a desire to synchronize the views of different portal channels. Currently, the portal community is developing specifications for inter-portlet communication [7], which I regard as an overweight solution to the problem they are trying to solve. I've written some thoughts about this at [5], in particular describing how I think a simple mechanism for delivering notification events, and how such a solution would be useful to more than just portal software. 3. My own work on "smart home" control systems based extensively on Web technologies. I am using Javascript/Ajax techniques to implement a simple event delivery notification so that browser displays can automatically update to reflect changes in the controlled environment. Beyond these three specific areas where I think event notification would be useful in other areas, such as RSS/Atom feed handling, displaying dynamic web resources like stock prices, etc. In my wiki pieces at [5], I outline what seems to me to be a plausible strategy for defining and introducing such a capability, using Javascript as a stepping stone, particularly directed to the context of multi-view synchronization for portals, but also more widely applicable. At the heart of this proposal is the principle of specifying a very simple event delivery protocol mechanism (probably an existing protocol) from the event descriptions themselves (e.g. as in email, with its separate specifications for SMTP and RFC2822/MIME). To the extent that this affects (extends) the discussion of interaction in "Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One", is this something that is appropriate for TAG to consider and/or try to exert some influence over? #g -- [1] http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/discuss/current/msg00275.html [2] mailto:discuss@apps.ietf.org http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/discuss/current/index.html (archive) [3] http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-engelsma-dmsp-01.txt [4] http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/discuss/current/msg00276.html [5] http://wiki.oss-watch.ac.uk/InterPortletCommunicationConsideredHarmful [6] http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/ [7] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=wsrp Cf. "Cross-Portlet Coordination SC: Chartered to define how portlets can react in a coordinated manner to user interactions with any portion of the overall application." -- Graham Klyne For email: http://www.ninebynine.org/#Contact
Received on Sunday, 12 March 2006 18:13:17 UTC