Re^12: Debian Metadata Proposal -- draft rev.1.4
Am 26.07.98 schrieb apharris # burrito.onshore.com ...
Moin Adam!
APH> > A identifier should always persitent.
APH> Should perhaps. My conclusion, which you have never been able to
APH> refute, is the identifier maintenance should *not* be done in docreg
I#m talking about identifiers used for docreg only!
APH> This is a design decision. I agree I'd like to see Debian embracing
APH> persistent document idenfiers in some cases, but I rabidly disagree
APH> that docregs files should be the medium for this maintenance.
I think, we#re talking about different things. I#m not talking about a
local URN system for Debian. Once again, what informations do we need in
our docreg format?
We need the URL/filename of the document. You#re proposing to use
"Identifier:" and I#m proposing to use "File:" Ok?
Ok and then we#ve got the Relation tag. And for this tag we need an
identifier. Right? And this identifier has to be unique in our "docreg
system" and persitent. Ok? But this can#t be solved with your proposal. If
you move the documents or the docreg files you change the identifiers.
APH> * what if I want to refer to a document that I haven't installed?
Where#s the difference between both proposals? For example if you install
the German HOWTOs only (which refer to the English originals) dhelp (or
another system) would show something like that:
Drucker HOWTO (de)
Beschreibt die Installation eines Druckers.
If you would install the Englisch and the German HOWTOs, you would get
something like that:
Printing HOWTO (en, de)
Describes the installation of a printer.
So where#s the problem?
APH> * what if I want to maintain possible URN->URLs for network use from a
APH> central location (i.e., I'm the DDP maintainer)
Where#re talking about docreg and not about an URN system!
APH> * if we're going to be doing persistent identifiers, they need to be
APH> centrally maintained anyhow (a single, global namespace), so a
Why? They have to be unique and the package maintainer shouldn#t change
the IDs of documents.
APH> going, and I'm not going to wait for it. For instance, if a package
APH> is yanked from a distribution, suddenly that so-called "persistent"
APH> identifier is gone. Doesn't sound very persistent to me!
Do we talk about words? You could call it static or simply unique. Again,
I#m not talking about a URN system. But the identifier of one document
should always be the same. This is very important for the Relation system
and is important for your auto-conversation system.
If you convert for example a SGML source to a PS document, you need a
unique ID, that is not changed if you install a new version of the SGML
source package.
APH> Absolute FUD. You *can* do URN->URL translation on a local,
APH> non-networked system. It's called CGI, using a local list of URN/URL
??? Local WWW browsers don#t use CGI scripts.
APH> Using draft standards is better than making up (and poorly designing)
APH> our own system.
I don#t think that my system is poor, but I think that the DC proposal is
missing some important things.
APH> See above. We'd create more problems.
No. Where#re the advantages of your solution?
APH> I'm not against adding new tags. And yes, it's explicitly allowed by
APH> DC. But the design you proposed is very poor (see above).
What should I see above? I#ve proposed a unique ID and a file tag. I#ve
never proposed a URN system for documents.
APH> Sure it's possible in my solution. Metadata have no identifier.
Why not? One book could have several metadata entries and several
identifiers: for example the ISBN entry, German CIP, US lib. of congress,
etc.
Again, please remember whatfor DC was developed: for books and to include
it in WWW files. If you include it in the HTML files, you don#t have any
problems. But we don#t include it. And that#s why we need a File tag.
Your proposal uses the identifier as URL/file. And this is a real bad idea
and this breaks the DC idea. For example I#ve added DC informations to all
German HOWTO HTML files. And I#m using something like "dlhp DE-HOWTO.html"
as Identifier and not our home page URL, because this would break all
links, if I change my provider.
APH> ?? What is the "local name" of a book? Poor example here! ;)
global name: ISBN 3-7785-2009-1
local name (TUB-HH lib): NTG-310 and 2615-933 3
P.S.: I#ve started to develop dhelp 0.4.x
cu, Marco
--
Uni: Budde@tu-harburg.de Fido: 2:240/5202.15
Mailbox: mbudde@hqsys.antar.com http://www.tu-harburg.de/~semb2204/
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