- From: Ashley Sanders <zzaascs@irwell.mimas.ac.uk>
- Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 09:58:48 +0000
- To: www-zig@w3.org
Bob wrote:
> so why have numeric USE values? And why have attribute sets?
> I have been debating this for myself - once you have EXPLAIN
> and the server tells the client what attributes go with
> the user selected search (e.g. "title") and these are sent back - well then
> why bother? Just tell the client the allowed searchname/field names that
> are searchable. And have what the user selected sent back! But I never bring
> this issue up - violates all sorts of things - [snupped]
Have to say I've often thought the same myself. Such a system
wouldn't please some people, but I'd venture to say it would
suffice for the majority of people who just want to do an
author/title search on an opac.
I think it is also true that a lot of origins/targets have basically
defaulted to such a system anyway. Origins can safely assume that
most targets support Use attributes Title, Author and Subject heading
(IndexData's Target Info web page confirms this) and don't bother
with the other types of attribute such as Position and Structure.
Most queries we get from origins such as BookWhere, EndNote, etc
just have Use attributes.
One attribute to specify a search such as "title keyword" seems
eminently sensible to me rather than the Bib-1 approach where
you can specify six types of attribute and still not be sure
you've got a title keyword search.
Ashley.
--
Ashley Sanders a.sanders@mcc.ac.uk
COPAC: A public bibliographic database from MIMAS, funded by JISC
http://copac.ac.uk/ - copac@mimas.ac.uk
Received on Thursday, 23 November 2000 04:58:55 UTC