Re: [tm-pubsubj-comment] Baltimore minutes

[Lars Marius Garshol <larsga@garshol.priv.no>]

* Bernard Vatant
|
| http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tm-pubsubj/meetings/2002-12-13.htm

Section 5, first "point":

  The namespace http://psi.oasis-open.org has been made available to
  host PSIs published by OASIS TCs. The physical directory for FTP is
  in fact http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tm-pubsubj/psi/ that
  will not show in the PSIs URLs.

The second sentence is very hard to understand, and offers several
possible interpretations that are wrong. I suggest that we remove it,
since people don't need to know this.


Section 5, second "point":

  Discussion on the structure of URLs in that namespace. Two
  requirements proposed by Steve for the URLs : be as short as
  possible (but not shorter), and carry certain semantics, so as to be
  human-friendly. General agreement on that. 

This doesn't really have to do with the minutes, but I think we need
more rules than just those. For example, the semantics should not vary
with time (more about this below), and there should be no more
semantics than absolutely necessary.

  For example, GeoLang PSIs for languages should use alpha code in the
  URL rather than numeric codes.

ISO 639 does not have numeric codes, so this is not possible. As
regards ISO 3166, which does have them, we chose to use the numeric
codes because they were the only ones that were stable.

Given the choice between stability and memorability I believe we
should choose stability every single time. In fact, the two are
fundamentally opposed, because having identifiers that are meaningful
to humans means there will be reasons to change those identifiers
based on what they mean to humans. (The ROM -> ROU change in ISO 3166
is an excellent example of this.) If the identifiers are meaningless,
on the other hand, this is not a problem.


Section 5, third "point":

  The structure should also be extensible and usable by other
  TCs. Making one folder by TC seems the wrong approach, making the
  URLs longer, and introducing extra unuseful semantics (OASIS is the
  publishing authority, not the TC).

Actually, the real reason was that OASIS TCs are ephemeral, and so
having the TC name in the URI would make the URIs inherently unstable.
This is an example of unnecessary semantics that vary with time.


Section 5, fourth "point":

  Should directory URLs be used as PSIs, and if yes, for what
  subjects?

What Steve says about this matches my memory.


Section 6, third "point":

  Discussion about title. Is it to be used as a name of the subject
  set? "Published Subjects for" could be considered a
  "machine-readable prefix", the actual name being the rest of the
  title "Languages in ISO 639"

This is not a very good fit to my memory of the discussion. I recall
the "machine-readable prefix" being proposed, but it was not accepted,
and personally I find it unspeakably repugnant. 

The real issue that was discussed at length was whether including
"Published Subjects for" in the title would cause difficulty when
creating a registry of PSI sets, as they would all be named "Published
Subjects for" this-that-and-the-other.

We eventually agreed to put "Published subjects for languages in ISO
639" in the HTML, but I am not sure we reached any conclusion for the
XTM metadata. Personally I don't think the issue that was raised
really is worth bothering about.


Section 6, fifth "point":

  Discussion about machine-readable metadata. Findable through source
  code header, need to set an XTM mime type. Suggestion to have some
  Dublin Core in the header.

I think instead of "source code header" we should say "LINK elements
in the HTML HEAD element". Also, it should say "need to register an
XTM MIME type".


Section 7:

  --  IRC meeting Jan 23th 1300 UTC, to try if it works for
  everyone. Further meetings to be fixed
  -- F2F meeting at XML Europe London in May. Day to be fixed.

It's probably worth adding that the agenda for the IRC meeting is to
schedule the London meeting.

| I have something that was not clear, neither in my mind, neither in
| Patrick's notes.
| What have we decided to be the subject identified by
| http://psi.oasis-open.org/iso639/

The PSI set itself. This was decided in the GeoLang meeting. I believe
PubSubj left it open.

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
ISO SC34/WG3, OASIS GeoLang TC        <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >