From: "Ronald E. Daniel" <rdaniel@acl.lanl.gov>
Message-Id: <9506261154.ZM7711@idaknow.acl.lanl.gov>
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 1995 11:54:59 -0600
In-Reply-To: Brian Behlendorf <brian@organic.com>
To: Brian Behlendorf <brian@organic.com>, Terry Allen <terry@ora.com>
Subject: Re: Re SGML URC spec comments
On Jun 25, 8:54pm, Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Jun 1995, Terry Allen wrote:
[Brian wrote the > > > material]
> > >The question is, how does one ask for the complete set of SOAPs
> > > for a given page?
> >
> > I don't think you can, other than by querying all the UR* servers
> > you know about. If anyone can make an URC (potentially including
> > a SOAP, as URCs are extensible), then a SOAP could pop up anywhere.
I agree with Terry that it will not be possible to discover *all* URCs
for a resource, and the best you can do is ask all the URC servers you
know about if they have any info on a particular resource. I think this
is desireable. Certainly, the notion of knowing what everyone else has
ever said about a document is initially very attractive, but there are
a few problems. First, I may not want just anyone to see my notes on a
resource, or I may want to charge them for the priviledge. Second, we
have all seen the variable quality of unmoderated postings. Do you
*really* want to see *everything*? I sure don't. There are cases where
URCs are intended for private use. For example, consider a grad student
working on a thesis and keeping a URC-based equivalent of a BibTEX
database for references. This would have personal comments that are
intended for private use. There is no reason that such a thing has to
be known to the world.
> It would be nice if the author/server *could* provide a pointer to those
> SOAPs (man, two levels of indirection) as a service. This would imply
> the SOAP-creation agent would send some sort of notification to the
> original dociument's server, which could be ignored if the server doesn't
> want to support it.
It would be easy enough for publishers to provide such a submission
mechanism, just to handle customer feedback if nothing else. It could
appear in the <relation> element of the current URC proposal. However,
I think we would all agree that it shouldn't be mandatory.
-- Ron Daniel Jr. email: rdaniel@acl.lanl.gov Advanced Computing Lab voice: (505) 665-0597 MS B-287 TA-3 Bldg. 2011 fax: (505) 665-4939 Los Alamos National Lab http://www.acl.lanl.gov/~rdaniel/ Los Alamos, NM, 87545 tautology: "Conformity is very popular"