Re: Uniform access to descriptions

At 8:41 PM -0400 3/20/08, Jonathan Rees wrote:
>I'm happy to give Aunt Tillie, who I take to be another victim of 
>your IT department, a place at the table in this discussion. We 
>should enumerate solutions that are accessible to her and evaluate 
>them relative to others. But I want to be clear what problem we're 
>talking about. I don't think anyone is proposing to eliminate 
>in-document metadata, or to eliminate 303. (There exist arguments 
>against in-document metadata, but that's another story.) I'm just 
>suggesting that we look at *alternative* uniform "channels" for 
>providing metadata, because sometimes you can't or don't want to put 
>it in the document (like maybe it's not a document and 303 is not to 
>your taste, or the format doesn't have a place to put metadata, or 
>any of the other 5 or so situations previously discussed).
>
>I can see why you might want to look for a solution to Aunt Tillie's 
>non-document non-303 non-# description problem through this 
>discussion. Although I'm not a big fan of 303s, this is an angle I 
>hadn't thought of.
>
>A URI manipulation convention such as Alan Ruttenberg's idea from 
>last summer [1] would work for Aunt Tillie since it doesn't require 
>any header or status code magic. Another solution would be a central 
>registry or a set of registries. (I'm not saying these ideas aren't 
>without faults.) What would you suggest?

I seem to recall you asking me this question before. Fair enough :-) 
I guess I just don't see central directories as likely to work 
without some kind of marketing plan, as they consume resources which 
nobody is motivated to supply. I like Alan's idea, being something of 
an Uncle Tillie myself. but (like all special-URI-format ideas) what 
happens when someone doesn't do things according to this master plan?

The only feasible idea Ive seen so far is Harry's recent point that 
no single technique will cover all cases, so there have to be several 
all of which produce the same effect and are, as it were tradeable 
for one another. That seems the line(s) most worth pursuing.

Sorry this isnt very deep. Im drowning in other things until the end 
of next week.

Pat

>
>Jonathan
>
>[1] 
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-semweb-lifesci/2007Jul/0109.html


-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC		(850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973   home
40 South Alcaniz St.	(850)202 4416   office
Pensacola			(850)202 4440   fax
FL 32502			(850)291 0667    cell
http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes      phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us
http://www.flickr.com/pathayes/collections

Received on Friday, 21 March 2008 00:58:28 UTC