Date: Thu, 17 Feb 94 18:20:10 -0500
Message-Id: <9402172320.AA00963@zippy.lcs.mit.edu>
From: Karen R. Sollins <sollins@lcs.mit.edu>
To: timbl@www0.cern.ch
In-Reply-To: Tim Berners-Lee's message of Thu, 17 Feb 94 10:35:19 +0100 <9402170935.AA04040@ptpc00.cern.ch>
Subject: Changes to URL document
Tim (and everyone),
About the architectural/functional specifications. My working model
was the following: there needs to be an overall architectural document
on the IIIA. Peter D., Mitra, I and perhaps someone else, but I can't
remember, looked at each other and agreed that it should come out of
our group and that we'd try to take a stab at it. There is no
concrete evidence of that yet, but the outline of it is formulating
itself in the back of my mind. It was going to include lots of some
documents by Cliff Lynch and Chris Weider (and maybe others, again my
memory is fading). There also probably needs to be a short functional
spec for each of URLs, URNs, and URCs. (Anything else?) It is my
thought that each of these documents ought to stand somewhat on its
own and therefore should include a brief overview of the whole
architecture. Probably the same one can appear in all three
documents, both for consistency and for expediency. Clearly it wasn't
the right thing to start with the URN functional spec, but since we
were in the process of launching ourselves at the URN standard, it
seemed wise to work on getting the functional spec out first.
Obviously, one is needed for URLs as well. In the vein of what would
have been nice in the best of all possible worlds, we would have
started with the overall document. But we didn't.
Now maybe this is all overkill, and we could create one document which
had all the good stuff that Cliff and Chris did and then launched into
the three functional specs. In fact, I'd like to see that happen over
time, but for the present there is a piecemeal attack on the problem.
In my notes I have no indication of whether anyone volunteered to
write the URL functional spec. It seems to me that that is something
that could be done easily by taking our brief overview, what you Tim are
taking out of the URL document, and a list of requirements. Now, it
is my recollection that in either Amsterdam or Houston we created such
a list, but I don't have it in my notes. Did the WG chairs keep those
slides and could they reproduce the contents for a volunteer? I don't
think it would be wise for me to volunteer because I'm already trying
to get the URN one finished, and I did agree to work on the more
general one. (And I do have my own research and crop of students to
keep going.) So I am not only not volunteering, I am precluding being
volunteered by someone else while I am not watching.
Karen