RE: Issue 133, and permitting no body

Hello John,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John J. Barton [mailto:John_Barton@hpl.hp.com]
> Sent: 06 February 2002 18:32
> To: Williams, Stuart
> Cc: mnot@mnot.net; xml-dist-app@w3.org; noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com;
> distobj@acm.org
> Subject: RE: Issue 133, and permitting no body
> 
> 
> At 02:21 PM 2/6/2002 +0000, Williams, Stuart wrote:
> >Hi John,
> >
> > > Returning to Stuart's thread, this line of reasoning says: "don't
worry
> > > about the POST response, worry about how the client formed the
message".
> > > Semantic ignorance is bliss on the client side: the less it knows the
> > > more we can accomplish.
> >
> >Sounds like the basis of a good lawyer joke :-)
> >
> >I guess this works if you think of a browser/UA as the client. If you
think
> >of the human being as the client then semantics ignorance on the part of
the
> >client might be problematic - he/she would have no idea what they have
> >accomplised... or committed to.
> 
> Hi Stuart. Yea, some how I need to say
"semantic-just-knowing-a-littleness"
> but it doesn't fit with the bliss bit ;-)

Indeed :)

> There are four intelligent beings in the web forms case.  One is the end
user;
> they are thinking "gotta get brittney spears video".  One is the web site
> designer; they are thinking "must meet sales quota".  Two other folks did
> their work before brittney was hot or the site designer was hired.  They
wrote
> the browser and server.  The first two folks never shared bad coffee and
> argued about the definition of "<is>".  Unfortunately the web services
> path seems to leading us towards lots of bad coffee.

Certainly... maybe it's time to invest in coffee (for a while) :-)

> >If you then replace the human client with a program... it presumably
needs
> >to be endowed with some awareness of the signifcance of the resources it
> >manipulates.
> 
> No program has awareness, but let's leave that argument for the next time
I can
> buy you a beer.  

Sounds a lot more fun that bad coffee... maybe early May if you are around
:-) I also think we'd find ourselves agreeing on the fundementals.
Awareness... well ok, I was trying avoid the work knowledge... so what would
you call the thing that a developer induces into a program... behaviour
perhaps (born of an awarness on the part of the developer)?

> The question isn't one of intelligence.  Rather its is a
> question closely related to "information hiding" in the technical sense.

Agreed... but does that mean no-beer?

> Suppose I deploy a web service for photofinishing.  I want every digital
camera
> owner and every photo sharing service to use it.  Plan A is to get all the
> camera developers and all the photo sharing services in to one room (yep,
with
> bad coffee) and pass out angle brackets. "Don't come out until you have a
> schema".  These folks are certainly aware of the significance of the
resources
> their programs will manipulate.  And I might even succeed if my coffee
budget
> holds up.  But I can't help but dream about Plan B.
> 
> So my mind wanders back to that brittney spears video.  From an
information
> perspective, most of the POST operation semantics were given to the
browser
> by the server. 

Hmmm.... the server gave the browser some imperatives (what to do's), it
didn't tell the browser what they meant. The UI decoration contains
narrative and leverages metaphors like shopping baskets and checkouts that
enable the human end-user figure out meaning. But I think this is your
awareness point above being made in a different guise.

> The server told the browser what the op code was (ACTION).
> The server gave the browser a stack to return (input type=hidden).  So the
> browser needed to act on a tiny set of widely applicable, generically
typed
> tags to communicate with the end-user.  How can we design web services
> with a similar information properties? 
>
> I believe so, but we have to work towards that goal.

Ditto... 

>
> John.
> 
> 
> ______________________________________________________
> John J. Barton          email:  John_Barton@hpl.hp.com
> http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/John_Barton/index.htm
> MS 1U-17  Hewlett-Packard Labs
> 1501 Page Mill Road              phone: (650)-236-2888
> Palo Alto CA  94304-1126         FAX:   (650)-857-5100

Regards,

Stuart

Received on Thursday, 7 February 2002 04:27:49 UTC