Re: Cloud Service Descriptor

Hi,

The problem with this is that index.html is designed to be rendered
and any linked documents, in the header, are either to support the
rendering or offering alternative views. It is not designed to act
as a means of discovering services by non-web browser.

In fact if I look at the 'sitemap index file', this also made available
as a separate file and is closer to the use case I am thinking of.

I also looked at RFC 5785 and that seems to make the assumption
that everything is on the same server.

My intent is to have something that is useable to a mobile device,
where you could point to a domain and have the rest discovered
via a well structured document and that is easily parsable. The
ability to provide a logo, name and description was to ensure that
services offering an easy to follow wizard provided the correct
identifying marks, that help the user confirm they are in the right
location.

An HTML document fails these, because in many cases they are not
well structured and often require a second pass to generate a well
structured document. Also, the index.html is likely to be managed
via a different update cycle.

Andre

On Nov 22, 2013, at 21:32 , Mike Dierken <dierken@gmail.com> wrote:

> That would be a great place to hold the elements you describe. It even supports lists of links.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Nov 22, 2013, at 6:26 PM, Andre-John Mas <ajmas@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> 
>> Uh, what does the index.html have to do with what I was suggesting?
>> 
>> On Nov 22, 2013, at 21:19 , Mike Dierken <dierken@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> See also : index.html
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Nov 22, 2013, at 6:10 PM, Andre-John Mas <ajmas@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi,
>>>> 
>>>> I am not sure whether this is the best place to ask this, but hopefully someone might be able to provide some feedback:
>>>> 
>>>> The basic idea is to have cloud services provide a simple descriptor file, that describes the services hosted and what the specific URLs are. The file could be in JSON or XML and would include such things as:
>>>> 
>>>> - service name
>>>> - service logo (possibly different sizes)
>>>> - service description 
>>>> - reference to licence 
>>>> - list of services (e-mail, storage, calendar, contacts, etc) and their URLs
>>>> 
>>>> This descriptor would generally be found at the root of a domain (http://mydomain.net, for example)or on a specific server (http://myserver.somedomain.org). Also, for security reasons it would only be visible to authenticated users, this also provides the optional benefit of having a dynamic descriptor which lists only the services available to the authenticated user. There might be a use case for a simple version of the file, visible to non-authenticated users, but at this point I have researched things enough to decide on this.
>>>> 
>>>> Microsoft already provides a descriptor file for exchange based services, so in certain ways it is about building on that concept, but also making it more generally available, eventually as an RFC (ideally). The benefit would be that on your tablet or PC you would indicate the domain name for the cloud service provider and the rest of the information is discovered, transparent to the user. 
>>>> 
>>>> The next step would to be to create an open client library that leverages this. 
>>>> 
>>>> Anyhow that's the idea. Any thoughts?
>>>> 
>>>> Regards
>>>> 
>>>> Andre
>>